Or, Hoke Goes Off On Cork Taint Yet Again.
While opening numerous bottles this week for some training I was doing, I had a run of three cork tainted bottles from one producer.
Opened bottle one....lightly tainted, but nonetheless perceptible. All fruit is gone, and nothing but a lingering stale, flat, dull quality is left.
Opened bottle two....Agh! Foul, rank, egregious, funky, cardboard and fungus mold and dead animals under the house. Outrageously, disgustingly cork tainted.
In a panic, I sent a person running to the restaurant (we were in a hotel meeting room) to secure another bottle. Success! Bottle procured. We opened.
Corked.
Now I happen to know about this winery, and about the winemaker, and the owner. And I can tell you that they spend hours and hours of valuable man hours, and a great deal of money, securing the best and most expensive corks they can, then testing, testing, testing, constantly testing, multiple corks from each and every batch, ruthlessly rejecting even a hint of cork taint. They pride themselves on going far, far beyond even stringent requirements to insure the wine they produce is as correct as possible.
And yet, even with all that care and money, cork taint manages to get through.
And when this happens....when I open what should be a pristine, delicious, evocative, compelling bottle of wine, crafted by an artisan to exacting specifications of quality, and then have to smell that disgusting foul odor emanating from the neck of the bottle, permeating the room, fouling everything it touches, and I have the most depressing disappointment come over me... Rapidly followed by outrage, pure unadulterated fury that this could happen.
I cannot, for the life of me, any longer understand the bleating of people who talk about 'the romance of the cork', or 'there hasn't been sufficient trial', or
"better to stick with tradition than chance anything new." And, okay, okay, the cork producers finally got off their lazy, fat asses and were forced to do something about it; and yes, they've improved, greatly improved.
But you know what? That's not good enough for me anymore.
I am sick to death of having cork taint spoil otherwise great wines. Or otherwise mediocre wines, for that matter. Enough is enough!
Get rid of plugs of tree bark. Banish them from all bottles. To hell with being patient and understanding and placatory. Off with their cork-heads!
Whether artificail/alternative or screwcaps or crown caps....or whatever closure will best do the job it's designed to do, anything is better than cork.
Period.
[I'd like to say that made me feel better---but it doesn't, not really; because I know there's a cork tainted bottle out there, waiting for me, lurking until the right moment to spoil my mood.]
