Wine consultant and internationally respected wine broker
Judy Beardsall

CORK SENSE..

When ordering a bottle of wine at a restaurant, make sure you check the cork. Always make sure what is branded on the cork matches what is printed on the wine label.

About a year ago, I was having dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant in New York. After I ordered off the wine list, the waiter opened the bottle somewhere out of sight. When he came back and started to pour the wine, I asked to see the cork. He looked at me and sarcastically said "Oh, you want to see the cork, do you? We‘ll then I guess I‘ll have to fish it out of the trash, because that‘s where I put it". He continued pouring, expecting me to drop the subject, but I quickly fired back "Well you gotta do what you gotta do. Now, get me the cork out of the trash, you might be able to find it next to your tip." A bit taken back, he left and came back 10 minutes later with a cork in a small cardboard gift box(which I still have) - a snotty move. The bottle must always be open in front of you, otherwise there is no way to know if it was a bottle opened earlier. Now Gordon Ramsay's restaurant is closed, the waiter never got his tip, but the cork lives on.

One of my pet peeves is cork sniffing, which is nothing more than a theatrical flourish!

The importance of cork sniffing to determine the quality of the wine is one of those often repeated wine myths, which, like most tales, spring from an arcane bit of truth. Sniffing the cork tells you nothing about the wine.

Only the most knowledgeable and highly trained specialists in the field of oenology can detect a possible taint on the cork - the effect of a cork mold - which could potentially affect a wine's taste, and then only sometimes. This is not a skill anyone other than such a wine expert can genuinely perform.

So, discounting the rare experts, if you're at a restaurant and the waiter or the server smells the cork, you're witnessing affectation in action. If you're at a dinner party, and your host sniffs the cork and actually makes a remark about how great the aroma is...you know better!

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