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Never before - in the seven years of my column - have I written about the cork and its problems. Not because I don't know about the vexing problem, or because I want to keep quiet about it or even negate it. But the dogged, even passionate fight, the emotional campaign against the natural cork has annoyed me for years. I wanted to know something about a wine and first had to listen to long tirades about how harmful the cork can be for a wine. I soon read more about the villain cork in wine forums than about the goodness of the wine. Then, when a wine magazine I hold in high esteem wrote endlessly about the corks and very little about the wine at a Bordeaux tasting "Ten Years After", I went into "inner emigration". It is true that I was annoyed when a cork taint appeared and I had to leave a wine to the sink. But I wrote it off - especially with old wines - under "pp = personal bad luck" (that's the term used in a forum).

Cork of a Bordeaux sample (Photo: P. Züllig)

For the first time I dare to write about it, inspired by an article on the page "Eating & Drinking" in the American "Wall Street Journal". Objectively and unagitatedly, without conspiracy theory and without messages of salvation for possible substitutes, the question is asked: "Is your wine lousy, or is it just having a bad day?" The caricature accompanying it: lightly dabbed, actually relaxed, more questioning than annoyed, even if the depicted wine drinker is sweating. The article begins with a factual explanation: "According to the law of large numbers (law of frequency), anyone who drinks wine regularly will eventually come across a bottle that is deficient." No zetermordio follows (as is usually the case), but the succinct statement: "Recognising that there is something wrong with the 'good bottle' is one thing, but identifying the problem is far more difficult." If a wine is only slightly corked, most people will not notice, say the renowned experts quoted in the article. "For the customer, explains Joe Salamone, a buyer at Crus Wine & Spirits in New York, the word cork has become an all-purpose expression, a vague catch-all term for a faulty wine. The range of wine faults is indeed broad and often hardly recognisable even to the wine drinker" So much for the article that inspired me to write this column. Is it oxidation, Brettanomyces (Brett for short), TCA (trichloroanisole), diacetyle (butter) or some other fault? My own experience (and this is why I am so reluctant to talk about cork): very few wine drinkers are actually able to tell when a wine is faulty at all. As soon as it's not clear-cut faults like oxidation, Brett or TCA, people like to talk about "creeping cork". However, this has little to do with cork, but rather with vinification, cleanliness, the use of yeasts, insufficient or exaggerated sulphurisation and, and, and.... and, of course, also with leaking closures.

Page about food and drink in the "Wall Street Journal" (Photo: P. Züllig)

In the quoted article, an expression is used for subtle wine faults that convinced me. A wine is "scalped", which roughly means reduced in aromas and fruit. However, these kinds of wine faults - they are the most common - can only be recognised if you know a wine (including the corresponding vintage) in detail and have an above-average sensory memory. I readily admit that even my very "ordinary" memory often lets me down, let alone my sensory memory, which - despite many years of practice - is far less trained. I have often practised: makeshift with the aroma case (Le Nez du Vin) and with pleasure and joy, but I have only very rarely opened the little "brother case" with twelve wine mistakes. Who likes to voluntarily rub rotten, mouldy, brackish, acrid, stinking smells under their nose? Who is prepared for concentrated learning in order to later - when things get serious - recognise cauliflower, overripe apples, onions, plants etc. in the smallest traces with certainty? That's where my otherwise pronounced will to learn stops at the latest, even when it comes to wine. It's much easier to say: "This wine is corked". That way you stay on the "better", i.e. more accepted side.

Aroma case for wine faults (Photo: P. Züllig)

With that, I don't want to clear the old good cork of all its evil deeds, not simply forgive it for everything and not continue to praise it as an important pillar of the "only right wine ritual". There have long been alternatives: Screw tops, plastic, glass, crown corks, diam, and some more will be "invented" and tested in the near future. For example, that the bottles are fused directly - analogous to ampoules with a predetermined breaking point. So the discussion about the "right" wine bottle closure will hardly stop, all the more so as it has been established "that it is only a rumour that there is no more cork taint in bottles without cork stoppers."Maybe we wine drinkers have to learn to live with faults (off-flavours) in wine, too, and that the absolutely perfect bottle is more of a pipe dream than reality.

Let's stay for a moment with the much-cited "Brett" (Brettanomyces). There are wines that have "Brett", indeed must have it, in order to be authentic. The earthy notes, savoury or horse stable, whatever you call it, belong to wines from some famous estates (especially in Bordeaux and Châteauneuf-du-Pape) because they give them authenticity, complexity and attractiveness. Much is also a question of taste.

The glass closure% one of the alternatives to the cork (Photo: P. Züllig)

"You can still use the corked wine for cooking!" How often have I heard this sentence from friends when - grudgingly, but convinced - I had to leave a good bottle in the sink. Another common misconception! It has been known for a long time, a cork taint (TCA) cannot be cooked out of wine. A laboratory experiment - recently described in the "Zürcher Tagesanzeiger" - with three veal cheeks, three different wines and three hours of time produced the following results. "In the case of the veal cheeks with the cone wine (Korker), the earthy, musty smell did not dissipate at all. The sauce still tastes distinctly bitter and the meat itself has also taken on the typically unpleasant aroma of a kitchen rag" The inexpensive wine (not corked), on the other hand, gave a "rather reddish" sauce, "with little depth", tasting "more like an acidic dip". The noble wine (not corked, price around CHF 60), on the other hand, resulted in "an aromatic, complex sauce" that "should actually be boiled down and possibly thickened with cornflour". But I don't want to withhold a surprise: "When you bite into the 'Bäggli', things look a little different. The acidity of the inexpensive wine suits the fibrous meat well, whereas the 60-franc wine seems almost too heavy and present aromatically."

This excursion into the field of bottle closures, which was unique for me, was worthwhile. While researching, I came across the same arguments again and again, especially rather mocking remarks about the "plop, crrrrck or click" of the traditionalists. But Helmut Knall (known as Knalli) has put it most succinctly on his blog "Wine-Times": "Let's finally talk about wine again and not about the stopper!

Sincerely
Yours

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