Why I hate corks

To me it comes down to one thing, consistently delivering a top quality product to the consumer.

And corks fail to do this.

Yesterday I joined a friend for lunch at one of my favourite lunch places, Loire. It is run with passion and élan by two long time friends Sylvain and Pierre who wanted to bring a bit of their native France to Harbord Street. Their simple food excellently prepared and presented is deeply satisfying to a jaded critic such as me.

I ordered a bottle of Sancerre Red from Alain Gueneau, a Pinot Noir, a rarity from the land of crisp, minerally white wines. Sylvain popped the cork and one whiff told me that this wine was deeply flawed with my old nemesis cork taint. When wines are this corked it is easy for any consumer to notice the foul damp basement/wet cardboard smell. This is a Lifford wine so I told Sylvain to scold his importer and bring another bottle. The second was perfect, a light, bright fragrant red that was the perfect match for a delicious lunch and a good conversation.

Later the same afternoon, the Lifford office is winding down from a hectic week of pre Xmas activity. Two weeks into the most important selling month of the year and Lifford sales in 2009 are ahead of 2008! Perhaps in anticipation of the Lifford Xmas party I decided to open not one, but two bottles of Pinot Noir 2006 Seven Springs Vineyard from St Innocent in Oregon.  Great producer, great vineyard great year and the first bottle showed all of that. Rich and complex it was everything a great bottle of Pinot should be.

Then I tried a glass of the second bottle.  I immediately commented to Nick, the Voice of Lifford, that there was bottle variation between the two. The second bottle was less fragrant but still showed good fruit and spicy notes. It was not noticeably corked.  We did a head to head taste between the two bottles and what became apparent was that on the finish, the fruit on the second bottle disappeared. The cause once again, cork taint. But this time, at such a low level, it was not immediately apparent on the nose. In situations like this it is always the finish that gives it away. Cork is a fruit vampire and if you notice your favourite tipple tasting dried out for some reason, invariably it is the cork that is the culprit.

And this is my big problem with cork. An over the top stinky, corky wine is easy to spot; wines with a touch of cork taint are almost impossible to notice, even to experienced wine tasters.

Here is another cork story. I am in Marlborough after Pinot Noir 2007 at Staete Landt with owner Ruud Maasdam for a gathering of his international distributors. I had brought with me three bottles of Clos Vougeot 2002 from Maison Louis Jadot. I had sampled one at the final Grand dinner and the wine was magnificent.  I opened the second bottle in front of Ruud and cursed as I found it to be corked. Ruud grabs my glass and immediately tells me that I am daft, that there is nothing wrong with the wine. To prove his point he seeks out his UK distributor who has been buying Burgundy for some 50 years and he too tells me that the wine is perfect. At this stage I go find the third bottle and open it for them. Like the first bottle it is magnificent and clearly heads and shoulder above the corked wine.  Ruud et al eat their words.

My point is, if seasoned veterans cannot pick out cork taint, how in hell can consumers?

Be gone you foul relic of a bygone age.