Conjecture about this cork

A badly flawed wine, but what do you think happened? The malformation on the inside (wine) end happened during manufacture or during the shelf life? What's with the crystallization? Here's your chance to kick sand on the 90 pound beach weakling. Go ahead, I can take it!

What malformation? It looks like a pretty ordinary foam core fake cork. The crystals are likely tartaric acid crystals stained with the anthocyanins that color the red wine. If you put a few into a solution of bicarbonate of soda (aka baking soda), the solution should turn blue.

Mark Lipton

[David M. Bueker]

No flaw with the cork. What was wrong with the wine (other than it was an Eberle)?

Tartrates that have crystallised out after the wine has been bottled due, probably, to temperature fluctuations. Look at them through a high powered magnifying glass. Some of the crystal forms can be really pretty.

You can eat the crystals- but they are usually astringent and mouth drying.

So what was wrong with the wine?

As others have said, the crystals are tartrates, and the folds in the genuine fake cork are typical of some kinds of those gizmos. A good bottling machine shouldn't produce the folds.

But I don't see any evidence of leakage, and for the tartar to be on the cork, the wine must have been stored on its side or upside down for some time.

But neither the creases nor the tartar is a likely cause of a flawed wine.

Actually, if you look closely at the pattern of the red tartrate crystals, you can see a leopard jumping on the back of a wild boar. I was looking for the Virgin Mary, but that was all I could see.

[David M. Bueker]

The edges just got rolled a little. No big deal.