Corke wine % increasing???

[Thomas]

WW, you can side with the under 1% crowd--your choice--but us in the business have little choice when a customer brings back a spoiled bottle.

I agree with CCK; much of the cork-spoiled wine I encounter has been stored by the winery (if it wasn't pushed out the door right after bottling) or by the distributor before delivery to me--not in my cellar. I am in the 3% range of corked experience, and I am getting better at picking up cork tainted wines.

Quite often, my dinner associates cannot pick it up until I open a second bottle and have them compare; it happened just last week with some dinner guests at my home. The wine was an Estramadura (Portugal) value-product I had tasted and am selling at the shop. The first bottle I opened at dinner with my guests was ever-so-slightly musty. I declared it "corked." We argued and discussed; I opened another bottle and was proven correct; the second surely was what it was supposed to be, and the first was bad. And this scenario has happened far too often lately. We need a better way to cap the bottles.