Wine Stuff

Getting a bad bottle of wine is not a very common occurrence. Over the past couple decades plus of wine drinking, I have only had to return one bottle of wine in a restaurant, and a couple to package stores. During the summer, I will get a couple of bottles of red wine that have been "touched" by the heat, but they are still drinkable. I generally don't buy any more wine from package stores that have allowed bottles to be damaged by heat, so that is not often a problem.

Tonight's dinner included 2" thick tenderloin medallions wrapped in bacon. I chose a South African wine, Kanonkop Kadette (2004). This is a new wine to me and looked interesting. It is a blend of four grapes; Pinotage, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. I was really looking forward to trying this South African blend and figured it would do well with the bacon and beef.

It was not to be. When I removed the foil I found that the cork was protruding from the top of the bottle by about 1/32" or so, not a good sign. Pulled the cork and it did not look like a bad cork, but smelled a bit vinegary. When I poured a glass, I knew for sure, a bad bottle. The wine was cloudy. I should of just left it at that, I knew it was bad, but I had to taste it. Bleech, it was horrible. You want to know what is worse? Being the optimist, I let it breath for a bit and then swirled it around in the glass for a couple of minutes just to make sure it had every opportunity to be drinkable and took another taste. That one almost did me in. V was laughing as I was shuddering and then trying to rinse my mouth out. Water did not work so I had to open one of my everyday go to wines, a wine that could be counted upon to make things right, a 2002 Barossa wine, "The Holy Trinity" (2002). This is a very drinkable wine that can be enjoyed by itself or with a wide variety of dishes. Dinner was saved.

Moral of the story, if you know you should not taste something, don't.