Popped a recent vintage of a very high end wine from a mailing list. Bummer it was corked. Obviously, this is the roll of the dice. Do most of you suck it up or inform the winery. I do not expect to have the bottle replaced as a right or feel in any way that the winery is obligated to do so. I did email them and told them in case they have had others with the same problem. Haven’t heard back yet. My guess is that it would be a good business practice to replace it; however, I am just not sure.
I think you were right to email the winery. When I’ve gotten corked bottles from a mailing list, the winery is usually pretty good about sending a replacement.
I do not expect to have the bottle replaced as a right or feel in any way that the winery is obligated to do so.
This is the problem. If you bought an iPhone on line and it arrived with the screen cracked, would you expect replacement? Or a pair of shoes on which the heels fell off?
You should inform the winery and They should replace it. They put out a faulty product. They don’t need to use corks and by choosing to do so, they know that some of their wines will be ruined. Why should you suck it up?
I know that it’s a tough situation for some wineries - if they don’t use corks, some customers might think that the wines are inferior. In an ideal world, they would have a list of the people who say they’d never buy a wine that wasn’t sealed with cork. Then you could send your corked wine to those people, who would at least enjoy it.
many wineries and importers will ignore you. Wilson-Daniels wouldn’t respond to my emails and those of a friend (who had worked for them and corroborated my claim, as she had tasted the wine) of a badly corked magnum of 1999 DRC Richebourg. A lot of retail stores will not replace. Other fine wineries such as Rhys will replace and make you happy. But at least try.
You should absolutely let the winery know, and you should expect them to replace or offer some other way to make good.
While I have some sympathy for wineries who may get an excessive number of “corked” complaints or people “trying it on”, one of my pet hates is when they have a “policy” that requires you to send back to them:
- the original cork
- the bottle with the remaining wine
- another bottle filled with warm water
- and a partridge in a pear tree
… so that they can (allegedly) ascertain you were correct in your assessment of the wine as corked!
What Greg & Allan said (defective product & importers being ***holes).
You buy a car and it doesn’t run: “Oh, I really shouldn’t bother the poor manufacturer, they didn’t know and they are probably busy.” It’s this kind of attitude which allows defective products to exist. Somebody needs to be accountable. Unless you can suck it up yourself and really don’t mind supporting inferior products.
Oh, I would definitely let the winery know, but I don’t necessarily expect a replacement. If I bought it from the mailing list then yes, I would like them to stand behind it. If I bought it retail or from auction, not so much.
I guess I should share a good word about a winery going above and beyond. Some years back I brought a vertical of Merry Edwards Windsor Gardens to a tasting. Note, this was well after the vineyard had been pulled and built over with condominiums. One of the bottles was corked and I noted it in my posting for completeness, certainly not expecting anything to happen, especially as I had not purchased the bottle from the mailing list.
The kind folks at Merry Edwards read the post and got in touch with me. They pulled a library bottle and replaced it for me, which was way above and beyond. Of course, I’d like to note that my relating this does not impose any responsibility of them or any other winery to do this in the future, but they deserve a shout out for standing behind their wines so strongly.
Loring also takes care of customers when there is a flawed wine, although having used screwcap since the 2004 vintage corked wine is not a problem.
I have also successfully returned corked wine to Costco.
You should and they are.
My experience is that most retailers like you to keep the bottle and bring it in so they can be refunded by their distributor. They may feel bad asking you to do so but I know that if it makes it easier for them I don’t mind helping.
Costco takes back all their corkies, as do every solid retailer I have ever dealt with if you KEEP THE BOTTLE (but I never buy uncertain prov from a retailer… Like a past auctioned wine or a good customers case of 82 LB that ‘somehow’ makes it onto the shelf… And expect anyone to foot that bill but me in case of corky- so I don’t buy trophies this way{Granted my ex cellar/ex negoce-through-proper-channels only is a dramatic increase over market value, especially imported goods but it’s all I trust…}).
Shocking as this may seem, there are market forces besides the top quartile of the Obsessive Compulsive Collector Disorder who rightly screams that the problem of corky can be eliminated via screwies. There is that entire cork industry, who might be the devil but is still a massive stakeholder, there are people that think it look cheap (Maybe Kevin O’leary can take them behind the barn and shoot them), there are those that do not like the slow short to mid-term bottle maturation of decreased closure permeability (I sometimes lean this way). It goes on and on.
We are fighting inertia of a great magnitude… Just give it another 10-15 years for the market to welcome screwies with open arms, or hope that southern/glaziers and Republic, in conjunction with their subsidiaries AND blue chip wineries they distribute ram change down the markets throat. For outside disruption to occur in this space, the uphill battle is immense and does not offer value for the decision makers (remember, the volume generating comsumers that are spending enough for a wine we would actually care about prefers romancing a cork), and the barriers to create your own products to fill a minutely demanded category 20 (more like 200, each with n vineyards as well) times over, get distribution + promotion/incentives in a legally protected system, etc… Just too insurmountable… Not going to happen from outside disruption.
But be patient… It’s happening just slower than we prefer because the factors don’t exist for outside disruption.
Tipsy rantsy donesky
The ruthless reality of a corked wine is that it is adversely affected, or ‘corked’, immediately after bottle occurs and the bottle is turned upside and the cork is put into contact with the wine. Period. Can it get ‘worse’ over time? Yep - but it is ‘corked’ immediately after bottling.
Here’s a real challenge with ‘corked’ wines - is the customer always right? I would believe so but in many cases, this just does not seem to float. I’ve come across so many folks who let me know that they’ve tried to return corked wines at restaurants, for instance, only to be told that to the somm or wine director, the wine was not ‘corked’. It could be that the customer is more sensitive to TCA than the somm or wine director; or it could be that the latters just don’t want to budge.
Getting back to the original OP - yes, the mailing list winery should replace the bottle and yes you should report it. How are we as an industry and that specific winery going to have a true picture of the number of ‘corked’ bottles produced if folks don’t let them know!?!?
Cheers.
Larry that’s exactly right. And funny thing - last time I saw you there was a guy pouring a corked wine. The bottle was more than half empty when I got to him. I smelled it and and looked at him. I handed him the glass. He sniffed and said “Oh yeah! This is off.” He opened a new bottle that was fine. Not going to out him or anything but he’s an esteemed wine maker and was pouring a pretty expensive corked wine that NOBODY had objected to, out of all those supposed professionals.
I think that’s why people ask to get the bottle back, etc. A lot of people just don’t know and then there are people who just don’t like the wine and claim it’s flawed. Tough spot for the producers. But then you talk to guys like Mark Neal and he’s convinced that wineries can do a lot more to protect themselves from bad corks and put it back on the cork industry. Personally, I love screwcaps, but if not those, definitely put it back to the cork producers.
Well - the cork industry is stepping up, selectively - now offering a ‘guarantee’ that if a wine is corked, they will cover the ‘replacement’ cost to the winery . . .
But this still assumes a) folks know what a corked wine is (and most do not) and b) the winery or customer meets the ‘requirements’ set forth by the cork company and c) that they got back either the wine or the cork or both . . .
All of this said, we as an industry have gone backwards over the past decade educating consumers as to what ‘corked wines’ truly are. I ask the question all of the time and the most common answer - when the cork is ‘bad’ and breaks or crumbles. Seriously. Folks just don’t know - and we are not helping.
Your example of the winemaker pouring the wine is repeated again and again every day in tasting rooms, at restaurants, and in people’s houses. If folks do not ‘object’ to this, they I guess no problem exists, right?
I truly believe something has to change - and all of the statistics thrown out there about ‘lower TCA rates than ever’ are taken with a grain of salt when a) most folks don’t know what it is and b) many who do and experience a bad bottle chalk it up to ‘the odds’ and never say anything . . . what is the true rate, then?
Cheers.
The winery graciously replaced it.
Ouch. Just another reason why I love Wilson Daniels. They don’t care.
Blake - there are a variety of reasons that screwcaps are not more widely accepted and you are correct in pointing out consumer rejection of them as part of the reason. However, there are other production/quality issues that, I believe, keep more wineries from adopting screwcaps:
- O2 Transmission issues and reductive environments (though I think this has been reduced to some degree by winemaker education around proper sulfur levels at bottling)
- delayed or retarded “maturation” or “opening up” over time in the bottle - this is a huge consideration you seem to dismiss out of hand?
- Closure integrity - screwcap integrity is a very small surface area if you think about it…only where the lip of the glass meets the liner of the closure. In my experience over the years the failure rate of screw-caps to properly protect wines from oxidation is as high as if not higher than the rate of corked wines I experience in the marketplace (I haven’t had a corked bottle in my program since I switched to DIAM and Nomacork many years ago).
I think screwcaps make sense for our early drinking, fresh profile, unwooded whites and we use them for sauv blanc, riesling, etc and we’ve used them for these programs…that said, I’ve had numerous oxidized bottles within my own program and am quite fearful to use them again.
Cameron, I suspect there was/is some problem with your equipment, either the bottling line or the caps or bottles themselves. I open a lot of wine, and I have never found an oxidized bottle under screwcap without obvious signs of physical damage, while I’ve found quite a few under cork. If I include TCA in my consideration of faulty bottles, cork is at LEAST a few hundred times worse in my own experience.
Also, I’m curious as to why you use screwcaps at all if you’ve had such problems with them compared to cork.
Good. I’m not surprised - the few times I’ve reported corked bottles to wineries from whom I regularly or semi-regularly order, they’ve happily replaced it with no burdensome requirements.
The one time I experienced something different, I had started buying from a Sonoma winery along with my brother, and he called to report a flawed bottle (I don’t know whether it was corked or what - my brother isn’t really a wine geek so I’m not sure he would specifically identify the flaw), and the person gave him some skeptical long-winded hem and haw about how the wine is young and might have needed more time and sometimes people mistake this for that etc. etc. So neither of us ever bought from them again, which makes it simple.
Retailers, on the other hand, can be tougher. If it’s a local retailer from whom you regularly purchase, and you can bring it in, and you bought it in the last six months, and you have the receipt, it’s usually fine. But I think many of them want to technically stand behind the product, but in fact make it burdensome enough that people rarely will bother.
Besides the fact that a winery should replace a defective product, I view this issue as a helpful test whether I want to continue to do business with a winery. After all, in most instances when you buy a bottle from the winery, you’re paying full boat retail–they make more $$ selling direct to consumers than they usually do selling to distributors/wholesalers/retailers. If they won’t stand by their product when it’s defective, even where their margins are the greatest, then I have to reconsider whether I want to continue to buy from them…
And yes, from time to time I have contacted a winery directly if a bottle I bought from them turned out to be corked.
Bruce
Cameron,
Doesn’t the arrival several years ago of varying O2 transmission screw caps do away with your 1 and 2 problems? With regard to #3, I have read that one benefit of screw caps is that the liner is in contact with the lip of the bottle, a surface that is formed in contact with the bottle mold, whereas cork is in contact with the inside of the neck, which is not in contact with the mold. In my view, random oxidation under cork is a huge problem, not talked about as much as TCA but at least as frequent.