Tainted Love
Written By: David Snyder on Fri, Aug 17th 2007
A few weeks ago, my wife and I were sitting at the bar of a popular restaurant waiting for a friend to join us for dinner. This restaurant is known for its solid wine program. Even the wines by the glass are housed in a temperature-controlled wine dispensing and preservation cabinet, and each bottle is smelled right after it is opened—that’s the kind of attention they pay to their wine.
While we waited for our friend to arrive, I decided to start the evening off with a refreshing glass of rosé. The bartender poured a glass from the half-full bottle in the cabinet and placed it in front of me. I swirled it and drew it up to my nose, and right away I knew something was wrong.
It was corked.
Situations like this can be awkward in restaurants. How can you really know for sure whether a wine is corked? And if you do believe it’s corked, should you send it back? And if so, how?
Corked wine is caused primarily by a chemical compound called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, or “TCA.” It was once believed that TCA was formed by the reaction between a mold in the cork and the chlorine used to disinfect it. However, studies have shown that wines bottled with corks disinfected with peroxide also suffer from TCA taint, which means that the old theory can’t be right.
Whatever the reason, one thing is sure: Corked wine is just no fun to drink. High levels of TCA will make wine smell moldy, like a wet basement or a musty attic. At low levels, a normally fruity and flavorful wine will merely taste dull or subdued--still no fun.
TCA taint is not the only flaw that can ruin a bottle. High temperatures will prematurely and dramatically age a wine, which could lead to foul odors and tastes. Also, if temperatures vary, it could cause the cork to expand and contract, which will oxidize the wine and make it taste flat. If the wine contains a bacterium known as acetobacter, exposure to oxygen could turn it into vinegar.
So what do you do if a restaurant serves you a corked wine? No question: You should send it back. Period. TCA taint won’t kill you, but once it infects the bottle, the wine is ruined. And drinking ruined wine defeats the whole purpose of having ordered the bottle (or the glass) in the first place.
The key to resolving the situation is to get the sommelier involved. If the restaurant doesn’t have one, talk to the server. Politely ask him or her to smell the wine—by asking for their opinion, you turn what could have been an adversarial situation into a friendly discussion about the nature of the wine you’ve ordered.
That’s exactly what I did with the rosé. The sommelier smelled the wine, agreed with my assessment, opened a fresh bottle, and poured me a new glass.
My rosé, though, was an easy case—the wine was undeniably corked. What could complicate the situation is that some people are better at detecting TCA taint than others, depending on their genetics or experience. (In fact, some people are genetically predisposed to be more sensitive to TCA than others.)
The worst case scenario isn’t hard to imagine: If you’re sensitive to TCA and the wine is exhibiting a low level of TCA taint, it’s possible that you may detect that the wine is corked even though the sommelier or server cannot.
If the sommelier or server disagrees with your assessment and you are confident the wine is corked, you have two choices. First, ask the sommelier to open a second bottle and compare the two. The risk is that if the sommelier and server can't detect the difference between the two bottles, you may be back to square one. Second, you could simply order a completely different bottle of wine, hoping your new selection won’t be similarly flawed. Either way, if you are polite about the situation, the restaurant should be willing to accommodate you. And don’t feel awkward about bringing a potentially flawed bottle of wine to the sommelier’s or server’s attention: You paid for it; you certainly have the right to enjoy it.
