The Wine Appreciator

Good evening and welcome to this edition of The Wine Appreciator. When it comes to wine, first of all, the cork industry can kiss my ass. Cork? Like I need that stuck down the neck of my wine bottle! What - to hold the wine in? SCREW THAT!

Go with a screw-cap closure instead. Better seal, no cork taint. Cork taint is a bigger problem than we wine aficionados (or "winos") like to admit. Incidence of cork taint may be as high as approximately 8% according to Chehalem's Harry Peterson-Nedry. And if you don't know who that is, trust me. He gets all the ladies.

Speaking of ladies, I admit it's kind of nostalgically romantic to jab into that cork with the screw, plunge it in, twist it down in there, really work it all the way into that sweet spot (but not too far though - the sweet spot, I said! Didn't you hear me?), and then kind of shimmy push shimmy shimmy pull it out and *doink!* your wine is open! That's always a sweet moment. I don't know why. It's just kind of something maybe subconsciously romantic about it.

But I've become a little disenchanted, even with that aspect. For one thing, the wine opener I currently use sucks. Maybe if I had a better one. For another thing, as with much in life, that sweet spot can be tricky to hit. A lot of the time you may screw it in it too far and the point comes out the bottom (bits of cork in every glass!), or else you twist it not far enough and when you swing the arms down for the extraction - dog gone it - you swing 'em all the way down, and that dang cork is only halfway out to where it needs to be! Still plumb stuck, in other words.

Sure, a powerfully-muscled brute like m'self can always finish the job by dint of main strength, but in terms of suave, the moment is already lost to you by then.

Tonight's wine is a 2006 Sauvignon Blanc, by Goosecross.

It's a little sweet.