What to Do with the Wine Cork at a Restaurant

So there you are, at a favorite restaurant with a group of friends (egads, even worse, with some business associates or clients) and you order some wine. The sommelier or wait staff brings you the bottle and uncorks it. Then, she/he places the cork right in front of you, and pauses for a few seconds for you to do something. A hush ensues at the table as everyone there looks at you. What do you do? What are you suppose to do? A failure here could lead to life altering implications, let alone sleepless nights and nightmares. Your career or your chances with that future “lover” sitting opposite you, might hang in the balance should you screw up here.

Well I have always wanted to do something with the cork that they sit in front of you, but of course what I would like to do with it would not be considered proper – either for the people at my table or for the restaurant.

Most people think that the reason for placing the cork in front of you is to sniff it and determine if there is something wrong with the wine. In reality there is little correlation between the cork’s odor and the quality of wine. So don’t bother. Some people have argued that if a bottle is “corked” (i.e., tainted from a spoiled cork), that you can smell it in the cork. I have come upon quite a few bottles of corked wine, and I do not need the cork to tell me there is something stinky about the wine. In fact, I have never been able to smell the “corked” aroma on the cork itself. This may be the result that the chemical that causes the corking (TCA or 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole by its organic name) actually leaches or leaks into the wine where it reacts with the chemicals in the wine to produce the stink that we called “corked”.

So in reality, the supposed reason for the cork offering (if you will), is for you to confirm that the cork is labeled with the same name as that on the bottle. So why would that be important? Apparently, in the past (and maybe still today) people substituted good (or more likely very good) wine with cheaper wine in the hopes of snagging a few extra dollars of profit. But surprisingly, the same thieves would commonly forget to put the correct cork back in the bottle. Checking the cork became a quick way of determining if the wine you were getting was indeed the wine you thought you were getting. So if you ordered a $500 bottle of Lafite and found a cork with the name “Sebastianti” on it, you can be pretty sure you have been hosed. So the practice of offering you the cork to verify that you are getting an original bottle of wine and not some substitute made sense.

But today, does it really make sense for the majority of wines purchased? Let’s say you buy a bottle of wine for $40 in a restaurant. That means the restaurant probably paid somewhere between $15 and $25 for the wine, depending on what their markup is. Most restaurants use a markup of about 100%; some way more than that, and some, way lower than that – although I find it rare to see people charge much less than 100% of the wine’s retail price. All that said, who would bother to substitute a $15-$25 wholesale price wine with something less? Now if you are buying a very high priced wine of a very rare vintage, say a 1982 Bordeaux, then it may make some sense to check it out and verify that the name on the cork matches the label on the bottle.

Now before I get an email from one of you readers, as to what you would like to really do with the cork, here are a few ideas of mine (none of which I have ever tried – honestly!):

• Stuff the cork into one of my nostrils and then shoot it out across the table – very mature and a sure fire way to impress your date
• Block out the obnoxious snobby people at the table next to you by sticking in your ear
• Fling it at the fire pit in the restaurant and see if it catches fire
• Stick a fork into it and roast it over the candle on the table – that will amaze the kids sitting nearby!
• Put it on the soup spoon and then rest the spoon’s neck across a pen or something and then slam the end of the spoon so as to launch the cork across the room – an awesome display of poor judgment
• Or see if I can land a three-pointer in a passing soup bowl or ice tea glass.