What’s in a cork?

I was eating at one of my favorite hotel bars in NYC when a funny thing happened. I ordered a glass of red wine to go with my burger, and the bartender suggested a 2013 Ribera del Duero– a Spanish wine made from Tempranillo grapes.

She poured a taste, and at first sniff, I knew it had started to turn. It had a slight vinegar or sherry smell, which is really common when wines have too much exposure to oxygen. This wine either wasn’t stored properly or was past its shelf life. Either way, it was oxidizing and didn’t taste right. Tempranillo can age beautifully, so hanging onto this wine for a decade wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but this bottle was definitely done. I let the bartender know, and she very happily poured us a 2019 Barolo -a red wine from Piedmont in Northern Italy made with Nebbiolo grapes- which was perfect with my super rare burger and fries.

This is where it got a little weird.

The bar hostess walked over, sniffed the cork on the Ribera, and told me the wine was perfectly fine. She was dead wrong.

Smelling a wine cork only tells you if the wine is “corked” (aka has “cork taint”)-- contaminated with a chemical called TCA. TCA usually forms when the cork is still on the tree. It’s rare (only about 1-2% of wines have cork taint), but it does happen, and when it does, it ruins a wine. Corked wines smell (and taste) musty like wet cardboard or newspaper. You pick up that smell on the cork, which saves you from pouring the bad wine into a decanter or glass and contaminating those as well. (Be sure to thoroughly clean decanters and glasses that have held corked wine so you don't ruin your next pour. )

This wine didn’t have TCA or “cork taint” but it was clear from smelling the glass that something “taint right” here. Note: you typically can’t smell if a wine has turned by smelling the cork. You need to smell the wine itself. I knew that Ribera had turned the second my nose hit the glass. The wine smelled like it had been sitting on the counter for too long…and tasted about the same.

Smelling a cork can help detect cork taint, but if you really want to know if your wine is good, you can’t beat sniffing and tasting the juice itself.