"cooked" vs. "corked"

We each have a unique set of tools for identifying flavors in wine...our taste buds and sense of smell and, to a certain degree, our visual senses all work together to help us determine what we like in a wine. Most all of us will differ in our interpretations of what is palatable. A wine with a pleasing color and aromatic nose tips us off that the taste will be promising. Imagine you are in a fine dining establishment...you are handed the wine list and after careful scrutiny, you choose a bottle. As the wine is presented, opened and poured for you to taste, you detect something is not right with the 'nose'. You raise the glass to the light and it looks fine... but then you taste and your suspicions are confirmed, the wine is corked! For most wine enthusiasts, it does not take long to recognize that a wine is 'corked'...it is somewhat easy to detect the barnyard or the mushroom stench of chemicals from tainted natural corks. Although there will be times that you may order a wine that might be on the fence in terms of being 'corked', other times it will be completely obvious that the wine is not drinkable with your meal! However, there is another culprit to be aware of in spoiled wine and that is a wine that is 'cooked'. Wine is made all over the world and each vineyard location has it's own unique ingredients. Every winemaker takes painstaking measures to insure that the wine they produce will be the best representation of their vineyard, but in order to be successful, they have to cast a wide distribution net to sell their wines. A lot can go wrong between the time the wine leaves the winery and the time it is delivered to it's final destination, it may be exposed to excessive heat during transportation or storage or may even sit on the shelf in a warm wine shop. And let's not forget that your personal wine storage may not have optimal conditions. How do you identify a 'cooked' wine? One of the first clues is that the cork may be pushed up a bit with a dribble of wine seeping from under the foil...this is because as the wine is heated in the bottle the volume increases and forces the cork up. Sometimes the wine may smell nutty or of stewed fruit instead of having bright fruit flavors with dull aromas. Extended exposure to heat can cause the aging process to speed up, which is unnatural and will not allow the wine to gain in complexity...it will just be 'cooked' before it's time. A wine that is corked is more obvious to me and I often end up pouring them down the drain or even taking them back to the wine shop if I feel they may have been poorly stored. Cooked wines are less obvious and may sometimes retain enough of their fruit to fool your palate and which just makes for a diminished wine experience. My opinion is that with any bottle of wine you give thought to and purchased it is worth considering how it might have been cared for on it's journey to your table as each day contributes to the life of a wine.

Here are some picks from our must recent winery visits which only had to travel as far as our picnic table:

Dutcher Crossing Winery 2008 Costello Vineyard Chardonnay ($28.00)
Nose of honeysuckle with elegant cream finish...

J. Rickards Winery 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon Five Sisters Blend ($34.00)
A classic blend of the 'Five Sisters' characteristic varietals of the Bordeaux region.

Quivira Winery 2010 Refuge Sauvignon Blanc ($28.00)
This release is sourced from numerous Biodynamic vineyard blocks and opens with fresh grassy tones.

Cheers!