Some of my most memorable wine experiences have involved Penfolds Grange, a world class red wine produced in Australia. If you don’t know Grange, it is Shiraz and is a remarkable wine. It ages superbly, much like a fine Bordeaux, and will easily set you back a couple of hundred bucks or more if you are lucky enough to find a bottle.
So I opened a 2001 (the latest vintage) Grange with some anticipation last night, expecting to taste a wine for the ages, or at least something very, very good.
Alas, the bottle was corked. Now some folks might think a “corked” wine is a wine that has simply been opened, or had the cork pulled, as it were. Hence that quizzical look I get from flight attendants when I politely inform them a wine they’ve just served is corked. They look at me as though I’ve lost my mind.
Uh huh. Actually, a corked wine is a wine that has been infected with “cork taint.” I won’t bore you with all the technical stuff, but the cork industry has a huge problem because it continues to sell tainted corks to its wine industry customers, despite much wailing and gnashing of the teeth from the wine industry.
That’s why you see so many “screwcaps” popping up on wine bottles these days. The wine industry is fed up, and so am I.
I have always argued that once the worldwide demand for cork slackened — that is, when more wine producers started using screwcaps instead of cork closures on their bottles — the “cork-taint” issue would disappear. I’m not so sure about that anymore.
Screwcaps are now the dominant wine bottle closure in Australia and New Zealand, and many California wineries have followed their lead. Yet the cork-taint issue — despite protestations from the cork industry to the contrary — remains.
Call me an elitist, if you will. Spoil a $10 bottle of Rioja for me and I’ll probably yawn. Spoil a rare treat such as a $200 bottle of Grange, now that makes me mad!
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