You may have heard the term being thrown around – but what is a corked wine? Even those who are seasoned wine lovers may have heard the term but might not know what it tastes like, or why it happens in the first place.
Corked is a term that is widely discussed, but it is often misunderstood. It’s a specific wine fault that often takes the blame for other faults. So this Wine Terms Explained aims to unpack this weird wine term so you fully understand it. You’ll learn why wines become corked, how to detect it and what it tastes like. Also, we discuss what to do if it happens to you!
What is a corked wine?
A good place to start when it comes to corked wine is understanding what it isn’t. So here are some things that corked wine is not:
- It’s not the pieces of cork floating around your wine or a cork covered in little white crystals
- You also can’t tell if a wine is corked from smelling the cork itself
- If a wine has a screw cap or synthetic cork, it can’t actually be corked
This term describes a wine that is contaminated with cork taint. This isn’t the taste of a cork but is caused by the presence of a compound called TCA (2,4,6 – trichloroanisole). This compound is formed when natural fungi comes into contact with some chlorides found in bleaches and other winery sanitation products. If a winery uses infected corks, the wine becomes tainted, and the TCA can even impact the entire cellar or winery if let loose. Once entrenched it is hard to get rid of, and since its discovery in the 1990s, most wineries have eliminated the use of chlorine-based cleaning products. Through the 1990s and early 2000s, it was believed that this issue impacted around 7-8% of all wines under cork.
The problem with cork taint is that winemakers can’t tell if it’s impacted the wine until it is opened for drinking because the TCA only reacts once the wine is left alone with the cork in the bottle. Two bottles can be exactly the same and even be in the same cellar but one can be impacted and the other not.
These wines are not harmful to drink, but just unpleasant. And unfortunately, as the term corked is quite popular and familiar to many wine drinkers, it often is declared the cause of a wine fault when it isn’t.
How to tell if a wine is corked
If you’ve never smelt it before, it can be difficult to tell if your wine is corked or not. But once you’ve smelled it, they say you’ll never forget it. This isn’t helped by the fact that some people are more sensitive to cork taint than others. The obviousness of the taint depends on how extensive the taint is, but also on your own sensitivity.
Wines with this fault are best described as smelling and tasting of damp, soggy, wet or rotten cardboard. It also dulls the fruit in a wine, making it taste lacklustre and cutting the finish.
It can be hard to work out if a wine is corked. One way to do it is to think about the notes you expect from the wine style. Try to smell and taste them, for example, if the wine is usually fruit forward, and there’s no fruit, you can be confident something isn’t right. But the best way to decipher the aromas and flavours is to learn what it tastes like – and you do that by trying a lot of wines! Eventually, you are sure to find one.
What should you do if it happens to you?
This topic is a touchy area because you don’t find it until you try a bottle. It can be intimidating to bring up a flaw in a bottle of wine, particularly at a restaurant or in a social setting. No one wants to be that wine snob, and you might be nervous that it isn’t actually a fault. Maybe you just don’t like the wine.
It can feel scary, but if that bottle doesn’t seem right to you, you shouldn’t hesitate to send it back. Corked wine is not enjoyable to drink, and if you’re paying for the bottle, you should let someone know. You can even ask one of the service staff to confirm. They would likely rather get the chance to fix the issue than have you go away thinking the wine was terrible. Life’s too short to drink corked wine!