Sunday, June 17, 2007

More Corkage

Due to the constantly fluctuating temperatures in New Haven right now, the ecWino headquarters is losing a fair share of its inventory to corkage.
I've mentioned corkage before, as well as tips on storing wine in a New Haven apartment. The main problem for us is too many bottles, leading to the "overflow" being kept upstairs, out in the open.
To those of you unfamiliar with the term "corkage", I'm basically referring to a bottle that has allowed oxygen to pass through the cork. Hot and Cold temperature fluctuations cause the cork to shrink and expand, slowly allowing oxygen into the bottle. The oxygen, in turn, ruins the wine.
-Some indications your wine has "corked"...
---When you cut away the foil on the top of the bottle, you find mold on the cork.
---As you remove the cork, you see evidence of moisture on more than half of the cork.
---When you remove the cork, the wine smells of dirty laundry or rotten eggs.

Unfortunately, there isn't much that can be done with the wine at this point. Some people will make Calimotxo, which is essentially 1/2 red wine and 1/2 Coca Cola. I wouldn't suggest this, however. My hesitance is not out of purism, Calimotxo should be made with a red table wine (one that is still drinkable), preferrably Grenache. Pretty much the only thing the wine will be good for is staining the deck at this point.

The names of the fallen soldiers...
2005 Steltzner Sauvignon Blanc (my free bottle from a previous bad review)
2002 Louis Bernard Cotes du Luberon (White Rhone)
2005 Domdechant Werner Riesling Spatlese

The Steltzner was an interesting one because it has a twist-off cap, which is supposedly designed to minimize the risk of corkage. The entire cap and sleeve came off, without splitting at the cap...

1 comment:

Aunt Ker said...

Matt,

This is a GREAT blog. I'll be back!

Aunt Ker