Cork Taint should be Illegal

It really pissed me off the other night when I opened a bottle of 1998 Chapoutier La Bernardine Chateauneuf du Pape and the darn thing was corked. The store I bought it from 5 or more years ago, Merchant de Vino in Ann Arbor, MI is no longer MDV, I think it was purchased by Whole Foods so I could not return the damn wine even if I wanted to.

Now here is the thing. What other business could sell you a product that is defective when you use it during it's warranty period and not have to stand behind the defective product? This wine is fine, right in it's drinking window, and yet now I have trash because the manufacturer (Chapoutier) could not put a proper wine in the bottle without tainting it with cork. The general feel is that most cork taint is due to natural materials in the cork reacting with chlorine used sanitize the corks to create 2,4,6-trichloroanisole or TCA. So the process used to make sure the corks are free from spoilage microbes also has the potential to spoil the wine. Most people cannot recognize cork taint as such. It just tastes like musty wine, or wine that has too much "wood" in it. It still is bad, the wineries, critics, academicians and your own taste buds tell you so.

Boo Hoo for the winery. They are selling me a product with the guarantee that they have done everything right and made a quality product. Why should it be my responsibility to eat this wine? I didn't make it, they did. I just wasted my hard earned money on it. Can you imagine a television that broke when you changed the channel but the manufacturer would not replace the set? The problem with wine is that we do save it and not use it right away like a TV that you use every day. I have saved this wine for years. I could not even locate the receipt if I had to. Still yet, the winemaker is responsible for their product and when they spoil it they should be required to replace the bottle.

Here's for asking our state, local or national governments to right a law requiring cork tainted wine to be replaced by the distributor or winery. Of course it will never happen. The solution is to buy wine from a retailer who will replace it if it is defective, even if you have had it stored for 10 years in your wine cellar. I know that Wine Discount Center in Chicago promises to be one such retailer.

This does not even began to address the disappointment one feels when their lovingly cared for wine is opened and ends up being corked. The greater issue is for the wine industry. How do you stop the cork taint and still allow the wine to age as is required to truly reach its potential? I am one that hates the thought of losing the cork as a closure but I also am sick and tired of having wine ruined by cork taint. Losing the mystique of the cork will be difficult, especially for restaurant ordered wine. But it does seem like it is necessary to change to avoid the TCA. It has to stop.