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CD: Cork Dysfunction

We've all heard--and probably muttered--aphorisms to explain the disappointment after opening and tasting what was supposed to be a "great wine." The most common explanation is "bottle variation," as in, "I had a great bottle of that wine only last week," or 'the last bottle of that wine showed much better than this one." Someone invokes the cliché, "It just goes to show you there are no great wines, only great bottles of wine."

I maintain that the explanation for bottle variation--a very real phenomenon--is the inherent inconsistency of using corks as closure for wine.

I'm not speaking of an obviously "corked" wine, those whose cork has been contaminated by 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), a chemical that imparts a musty, wet cardboard or wet basement-like aroma to the wine. Those wines represent just the tip of the iceberg. I believe that bottle variation comes from using corks at all. All corks, by their very nature, have the potential to fail--to a greater or lesser degree--and change the character of the wine. This failure rate explains bottle variation, how two wines from the same case stored under identical conditions taste different.

But I wouldn't jump to screw caps just yet.

Stripped Wine

More prevalent and harder to detect than overt corkiness, is a cork taint that strips the flavor, aroma and fruit from the wine in the absence of perceptible TCA aroma. This defect is detected only when tasting--or drinking--a wine you know well. Occasionally, when tasting a producer's wines with the winemaker, I will run across a bottle that is not exciting, but not flawed, at least to my palate. The winemaker, clearly unhappy with it, opens another bottle that turns out to be very different, vibrant and full of life. If I weren't tasting with someone who knew the wine well, I never would have known it was an 'off' bottle, I would have assumed in was a mediocre wine.

Sometimes you can identify the problem yourself. Not long ago I opened a half-bottle of 1990 Château de Rochemorin from my cellar. I had purchased a case and had been drinking and enjoying bottles periodically over the years, but this one was disappointing, lacking fruit and vitality. At first, I figured I had just waited too long, that the wine was past its prime, not unreasonable for an 18-year old wine in half bottle. I opened another one, figuring that, if they were all past their prime, better to know sooner rather than later. To my surprise, the second bottle was wonderful: mature, balanced, and not at all tired. These two half-bottles came from the same case, and were stored identically, so the only explanation for the dramatic difference between them was the cork.

Of course, bottle variation can be caused by different storage conditions, or by consuming the same wine at different temperatures, or, not least important, the overall setting ...