Bad Wine

It has actually happened to me twice in one week. The first was at our Wino Club to one of the Rieslings. Tonight, I had a beautiful Premier Cru White Burgundy chilling. There is a cool summer breeze flowing outside on the patio and I'm ready to relax. I open up the beautiful foil and I see it. The cork had visible signs of foil rust, if there is such a thing. The cork had turned a beautiful shade of burnt umber. Beautiful on anything else but a cork of course. Ever hopeful, I took a chance and opened it up and unfortunately confirmed my fears: the bottle was corked.

Corked wine means that somewhere along the road the cork no longer provided the proper air seal and the wine spoils and goes bad. My beautiful Burgundy was not even fit to make a vinaigrette. When you open and pour any bottle, if it is corked you will know it. Don't blame the wine. The corked Riesling last Thursday tasted like rubber bands, an odd flavor for this particular varietal if I must say so myself. I don't always trust my nose because some wine actually does smell bad, can we talk about petrol and cat pee? But there's no tricking my eyes (yes, the bottle level had dropped by an inch as well but I kept on hoping) AND my mouth which definitely did not care for the sour flavor that ensued.

The saddest thing was that it was my last bottle of white anything. It's been so warm that I've been plowing through them until I was savoring this last bottle before my next trip to the wine store. Now I have nothing and will have to revert to my natural ways and pop open an ice cold beer!