I never smell the cork. As others have said, only the wine matters, and since the bottle is already open, might as well smell the wine. I mean, if you smell TCA on the cork and you don’t smell it in the wine, will you dump the bottle? I won’t.
I think the downside of obvious cork sniffing is that some people get attached to it as an indicator. I remember having a horrible time trying to explain to a shop owner in Italy that the wine was corked, and he insisted it wasn’t based on nothing except sniffing the cork repeatedly, even though the bottle with the wine was right there. He passed that cork around to everyone on staff, and half the patrons, looking triumphantly at me every time someone agreed there was no smell on the cork.
I have a dim recollection that the history of cork smelling went something like this.
Originally, waiters/somms presented the cork so the patron would know from the markings on the cork that it was the correct wine and that the cork was in sound condition.
Ignorant customers thought they were expected to do something more than look and started sniffing.
Then we were told that we shouldn’t sniff, and sniffing became a mark of poor (or pour?) breeding.
Smelling the cork is pointless. Smelling the top of the bottle just after opening is far more useful to check for TCA. Of course, smelling the wine in a glass is even better, so I only smell the bottle in situations where I’m opening a number of bottles at once. There have been quite a few times when I’ve smelled TCA on a cork and the wine has been fine.
For variety, you might try occasionally holding it up to your ear, shaking it while cocking your head to suggest you’re listening intently for rattles.
Since TCA often comes across as musty wood/damp cardboard, I find it hard to separate TCA from the untainted smell of a wet cork, particularly one where the wine has soaked in a bit.
Yes, old corks often smell like that to me, and I’m not always sure if the smell is TCA or simply old, saturated cork. Especially pointless to smell the cork on older wines. Pointless on any wine.
I always sniff the cork especially for TCA. My sensory perception seems to be acute enough to differentiate and pick up most bottles that are flawed. It just happened at a dinner Tuesday night when I pulled the cork, got TCA, poured the wine and confirmed such. Definitively corked. My wife’s olfactory perception definitely can pick it up when I have doubt or no clue…
I picked up very light TCA on a bottle of 1996 Clos L’Oratoire last week and the bottle likewise had very light TCA, confirmed by two others.
When presented with the cork by an officious sommelier at a restaurant, I take it, bite the end off, and say “Mmmmm, it’s delicious.” An old Frank Prial trick.
Smell the cork. You too busy doing something else? I’ve never gotten a false positive, and it’s not as though I’m going to reject or accept the bottle without checking what’s in the glass.
Besides, the most important thing is to be contrary, and since not smelling the cork is what y’all snobs are doing, I’m going to do it till the tide turns back the other way again.
Steve Martin served Kermit a sparkling muscatel if memory serves, and for something south of a buck.
Champagne corks usually smell pretty good just after opening. If it’s a young bottle I’ll smell ithr cork and the bottle to get a clue as to whether it’s ok to decant without a sample. This is supposed to save me from wasting a decanter on tainted wine, but not totally effective.
So I will amend my earlier post. In a public setting, I do not sniff the cork while a wait person is there waiting to pour. I would not turn back a wine based on the cork alone. But it is another part of the experience - of the entire wine package - that, to me, is worth paying attention to. This past week we sniffed a cork AFTER we determined it was corked. I detected by the nose, and my companion detected the loss on the palate, as he knew the wine well. Corked is corked.
And besides: so many corks are so cool! Look at the cork…perhaps sniff the cork…see the saturation or sediment/throw as part of gaining experience with the wine, particularly older wines.
I say “no harm, no foul.” Do what you want, do what you enjoy. Sniffing a cork is no more pretentious than posting about what allocation you received from which winery. It is all part of the excitement, the education, the experience.
My wife is not overtly silly in public, but when she spots a wine on a list and she orders the wine, if the server opens it for me to inspect the cork when she was the one who ordered it, she will make a little football goalpost with her fingers and I will take the cork and attempt to “kick” (flick) the cork through the uprights. If a make the field goal, I will look at her in anticipation and she will proclaim, “It’s good! Pour him a taste!” If I miss, I will hang my head and she will say “Oh, a miss, better pour me the taste.”
I shoot about 50%, I am pretty lame at cork finger football. I still can’t decide if flicking it straight fingered or soccer style (side fingered) is better. Easier to get loft with straight fingered, but I have accidentally somehow managed to flick the cork over my own head a few times. Embarrassing!
We did that at Postrio in SF the first night I met her brother and her parents. This was long ago, but we had an '83 Latour and an '83 Opus and I made both shots. The server didn’t miss a beat and poured her a taste of each, then she deemed the wine fit and the table was served.
Other nonsense side note. We play ‘basketball’ with corks when we open wine in the kitchen. We throw them on top of the cupboards and try to ‘defend’ against whoever has the cork. My family falls over laughing, I am so bad. I even miss cork lay-ups. watch out, my wife will shark you.
I remember years ago seeing Carlo Rossi on some talk show - Mike Douglas, I believe (so many years ago) - excitedly talking about wine and that one need not be pretentious with wine. He disparaged the act of a wine steward opening a bottle and the routine of the guest making a big deal over smelling the cork.
As per Carlo: “If you want to smell the wine, smell the wine! Don’t smell the cork!”
For me the cork can give confidence or set alarm bells ringing. Either way smelling and/or tasting the wine in the glass is still a necessary next step, though if the cork appears to reek of TCA, then I’ll be looking for it and expecting it in the wine itself.
Squeezing the cork? That’s one I’ve not heard of before, but really a nonsense vs. smelling and tasting the wine for oxidation. Much more indicative is whether the cork has been soaked its full length, but even then with the cork out, smell and taste the (damn) wine.
One of the benefits from sniffing the cork and detecting a flaw and then confirming it in the glass is that it can avoid others pouring the wine into their glass and then having to go though the rinse and clean cycle. This happens often my 3 wine groups where we have many wine glasses in front of each setting at the table and judicious use of each glass is prudent.
In almost every instance I pop the cork and pour or am poured a small taste of wine. I find TCA is way easier to pick up in the small pour than on the cork. I look at the cork and will pick it up to see saturation, signs of seepage, signs of crumbling or decay. Those are flags that point me in the direction of a closer examination of the poured taste. If there are signs of seepage I’ll pay especially close attention for signs of oxidation or stewed notes in the wine. I think the cork is a good indicator of the shape of the wine…at least to some degree…and the wine will tell you whether it’s corked or not.
In most instances a taste of the wine is completely unnecessary when at a restaurant. You can smell the taint or not, and if the cork is perfect and there is no taint, you’re not going to have some flaw in the wine you can’t sniff out. The total checklist to determine whether the wine a waiter brings is flawed should only take a few seconds. Look at the cork, sniff the wine, it’s good or it isn’t.
Here’s a related question. Can a cork be absolutely riddled with TCA and the wine be unaffected?
That’s the gist of a claim made by a retailer from whom I bought a decent bottle of '88 Pomerol a couple months back. The cork was reeking from moment I opened the bottle but I will say that the wine did not show a similarly blatantly obvious nose of TCA, though it was disappointingly mute (I believe its true that one of the effects of cork taint is to strip a wine of flavor) and was clearly “off” with a dirty, musty nose that didn’t blow off with a couple nights open in a fridge.
So I took it back - I bought it from a reputable retailer (I figured the wine would at lease be genuine, and the condition would be up to the gods) and to be fair they accepted it and gave me store credit, which was perfectly fine with me. I did, however, get a bit of a lecture from a gentleman who was summoned by the floor staff to taste my wine and who told me that he thought the wine was fine and that one can’t say that a wine is corked by smelling the cork, even if said cork smells of TCA to high heaven.
I’m not sure how this can be so given that the cork is the source of TCA in the first place. What do you guys think? Any feedback would be appreciated.
It’s one of the reasons why you may get a false negative from the cork–esp. the top of the cork.
Even if a cork reeks of TCA, that doesn’t necessarily mean that enough of it leached into the wine to render it obvious. Sometimes the cork reeks of TCA, but you can’t smell it in the wine.
As you say, though, one sign of TCA in wine in modest amounts is that the midpalate is stripped or muted of flavors.
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