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Corked Wine

Is Your Wine Corked

Here is a video quicky on checking wine before you purchase.

Turns out this wine was corked even tough it seemed OK from a simple check. It was not “badly” corked but still… it was compromised and a bit off so it was returned. You saw the cork in the video. I cut the cork in half and indeed it was stained in several cracks that ran through the body of the cork.

A corked wine has been exposed to a cork infected with a fungus that produces 2,4,6-trichloroanisole or TCA. The chemical gives it the off smell. Like wet dog, wet cardboard or newspaper.

Up to 4 or 5% of all bottles of wine are corked. This bottle was Frei Brothers Reserve Syrah Russian River Valley 2006 Northern Sonoma. It’s an excellent wine we have had before and I was opening this one to do a review.

Woops… I will do one later.

Turning the label is not fool proof as you saw. Sometimes you will need to grip the top label firmly to turn it & thats fine. However if the neck wrap starts to tear from being stuck to the neck you may want to try another bottle. A cork pushed up even a little bit is typically a sure sign.

A bottle that is not full to near the bottom of the neck/cork may be a sign of having been overheated during transport leading to a corked or cooked bottle.

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Decant or Not Decant How To Decant Wine

Author: The Frugal Wino

To decant or not… that is the question

Lots of opinions, myths and highly personal thoughts on decanting wine were read to come up with our opinion on this topic.

Read it at our main website here Decant or Not along with info on decanters.

If you feel compelled come back to this post and comment on our opinion.

Here is a pic of one of our decanters we really like. $19 at Total Wine and includes two nice tasting glases. However it is a paan to wash, but not as much of a pain as some.

duckdecanter