How to Tell if Your Wine is Corked

What does it mean to have corked wine? If you open a bottle of wine that smells musty and has the flavor to match, it has been extremely corked. If you open a bottle of which you know the flavor profile, and the flavor seems muted or absent, it is slightly corked (or just poorly made wine). The cork in the bottle and the oak barrels in which wine was aged can expose the wine to a fungus induced by the natural compound trichloranisole (TCA).

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Open the bottle of wine and pour an ounce of wine into the taster’s glass. This is precisely the reason why sommeliers pour a taste of wine into the glass of the person who ordered the wine. This gives the person a chance to check for any flaws in the wine such as having been corked, oxidized or past its prime.

2. Swirl it and stick your nose into the glass to propely smell the wine. Extremely corked wine can be detected at this point. It smells like “wet dog,” “wet cardboard” or a “swimming pool.”

3. Taste the wine. If the wine seems a bit off and you think it might be corked, it probably is. Ask the sommelier to taste the wine for any corkiness.

4. Lastly, if you want to get chemistry-geeky about it, you can always purchase chlorine test strips. Dip the test strip into the wine and if it comes back with a positive result for chlorine, it’s a corked wine.

Tips & Warnings

• Corked wines pose no health issues; it only alters the flavor of the wine.
• These test strips are not prevalent enough in wine shops, but if you go to a pet store that carries fish tank equipment, you can pick up test strips or litmus paper for chlorine detection.

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