Broken Cork ... What does it tell you?

Sometimes I open wine and cork comes out nice and easy and sometimes it doesn’t.

Opened up a 2007 bottle last night and cork started breaking midway through the pull. Still managed to get it out but … is this some sort of an indicator that cork might have dried out or something?

thank you

Yes, but that could have been a dry cork when they put it in as well. It’s basically just part of the game. 2007 is young so it shouldn’t be dry…I’d say it’s probably just a low-quality cork. With aged wines 20+ years…corks can break half-way due to saturation…

+1 on the dry cork, but how far do you screw the corkscrew in before pulling?

I don’t use a regular corkscrew on anything older than 6 - 7 years or so just for this reason. I use a two prong Ah-So and never have a problem with older corks.

I love my Ah So, but most people fear them.

Dry cork
wet cork
cork stuck to sides of bottle
you suck at opening bottles

DRY CORK! I’ve done a lot of cork QC in the past, from moisture testing, visual & functional grading, sensory, bottling insertion and extraction. Unfortunately many small American and European wine producers don’t know much about corks and trust their supplier to ship them whatever is available so these sub quality corks are more often found amongst those wines than wines produced by large wineries.
I have the luxury of this knowledge and practice it on our tiny brand so we are one of the exceptions.

If you notice seepage around the top of the cork before extracting it and have an ah-so use it.
[cheers.gif]

Somebody here doesn’t own a Coravin? [shock.gif]

Telling me I need a new cork!

All a broken cork definitively says is that I’m going to have to work harder to drink the wine than normal, might even curse a few times during extraction and filtering, and then I’ll need a capabunga from the drawer.

Cheap cork and I should have drunk sooner, not meant for aging.

Tells you we need to go to screw caps, is what it does…

Are you left handed?

Hmmm, good question - he might have bought bottles with right handed corks.

Solid first post. Haha