You can picture the scene. It’s a weekend dinner party for friends, the table is set, the candles flicker and the smell of dinner makes your mouth water, followed shortly by that lovely sound of the cork popping. This, you think, is what life is all about; wine, food and good company. Finally you lift the glass towards your nose only to get a whiff of an old farmyard. Corked! It’s a mixture of frustration, embarrassment and guilt all rolled into one.
Why me? I open another bottle and apologise, but the moment is lost and my friends think it’s highly amusing, me, the wine merchant, serving duff wines. (How I’m supposed to pick a corked bottle out beforehand is beyond me). But this can and does frequently happen to us all and when it does we feel somewhat cheated.
I tell you, it’s annoying to tip a £5 bottle down the sink, a £25 bottle hurts! The industry tells us the situation is improving and that it doesn’t occur as much as it used to but I still seem to get as many corked bottles as ever. The trick is to try and keep a couple of replacements for such an unfortunate occasion. CN
