I sent a letter to Don Sebastiani and Son's tonight that I want to share. LBV is le bon vin de la Napa Valley, a label of The Other Guys, a division of Sebastiani (albeit as far removed, apparently as Plato's shadow on the wall of the cave.)
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Thought you might want to know this.
We're not cork snobs. I understand all of the reasons screw tops are actually better. But . . .
We opened our first bottle of LBV Chardonnay, Vintage 2004 today. As soon as I popped the ? (what do you call that thing), an overwhelming smell of vinegar assaulted my nose. "Oh . . . this is bad," I thought. I smelled the--okay, we'll call it a cork for lack of a better word--and wow, vinegar, strong vinegar. I put my nose to the bottle. Vinegar again. But, I thought, maybe this is just something about this particular corking method . . . maybe the wine is okay. So I poured some. It was fine. I was surprised. So was my wife (who's face when she'd put her own nose to the bottle . . . well, let's just say the culprit here wasn't my sense of smell).
Bottom line: good wine.
Real bottom line, let me quote my better half here: "I don't think I'd buy this again."
"The cork?" I asked.
"Yeah. That was just weird."
I had to agree.
So, bottom line, even those open-minded about the right way to seal a bottle of wine don't want to have flashbacks to dieing Easter eggs when they open a bottle. That plastic thing that's not a screw top and not a cork . . . also not cool in our book.
I just thought you'd want to know.
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cdc
Corks are watertight but very slightly gas-permeable; I am betting that they permit a little outgassing as the wine ages, so that the nose is not assailed with acetic acid fumes (as yours was) on opening the bottle; a hermetically sealed bottle with a plastic cap won't do that.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm drinking (or more likely cooking with) craptastic table wine, I don't care how it's sealed up, really. Putting a cork in a gigantic jug of Gallo Hearty Burgundy would be laughable (however, it's fine in, say, boeuf bourguignon or coq au vin, if you want to go cheap.)
But good wine should have a cork in the bottle.
There is probably an expensive high-tech solution involving one-way valves in the plastic caps, but corks have worked nicely for centuries.