We love to smell things, those of us who land on the wine and food spectrum somewhere between “Interested In” and “Obsessed With.” Smelling is a huge part of our pastime. Just about everybody gives wine a sniff, and lots of others have no problem lowering their faces above recently-set-down dishes of food as they click through the sensory checklist: view, smell, taste, emote.
Many of us go beyond that, smelling ingredients at grocery stores or during a cooking session (even if we are not the ones doing the cooking), smelling various plant life, and even non-flora. Like furniture, the animal-hide drumheads of various world percussion instruments and gasoline. Maybe I’m talking about only myself in that last sentence, but the aromatic-curious among us know generally where I’m coming from. I’ve long been an indiscriminate sniffer, and I can safely say I’ll smell anything once.
Early in my wine journey, though, I refrained from smelling corks for any reason, first because I thought I would look stupid doing it, and second because I didn’t know what to smell for. Like gazing through a jeweler’s loupe at a diamond, unless you tell me what I’m seeing, it doesn’t really mean much to me.
In restaurants, I didn’t feel it was my place to pick up the cork that a server had just set down and ceremoniously lift it to my nose. That reticence served me well, because, luckily for me, I was clued in very early-on that there is no need to smell the cork when a server sets it in front of you. Smell the wine, not the cork.
Your job when that first small splash of wine gets poured into your glass is to let the server know whether the wine is spoiled or not. She doesn’t expect you to say whether you like the wine or not. All she wants to know is whether it is in good condition or bad condition. I assume that a few people have sniffed corks in my presence through the years, but the only time I clearly remember it happening was at a winery, where a visitor insisted to the winemaker that the wine we were sampling was affected by cork taint, or TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole), the compound that can create unsavory aromas in wine, ranging from wet cardboard to musty boathouse.
The winemaker couldn’t smell anything wrong in the wine itself, so he lifted the cork to his nose and rolled it, quickly and precisely, as he sniffed. It was clear that he had employed this maneuver many times before; that cork spun like a log beneath a couple of world champion log rollers. He shrugged, opened a second bottle and did the cork roll all over again. As far as he could tell, both bottles were good.
Since that day I, too, have sniffed corks every once in a while just out of sheer curiosity, because, as we’ve established, I like to smell things. But keep in mind the reason for the winemaker’s cork rolls. They were part of an investigation, and not just any investigation — a disputed investigation. That winemaker would have slapped his knee three times, covered his left eye with a patch and pressed his ear to the wall if it would have helped him smell what his guest was smelling. The winemaker was not sniffing for pleasure — he was trying to sniff out a culprit because he found no clues in the wine itself.
The cork was his last line of defense, and if you smelled something off in a wine that you ordered in a restaurant and the server or sommelier couldn’t smell what you were smelling, she might resort to smelling the cork too. But generally, all anyone needs to do is smell the wine. You don’t really even need to taste it when that first pour lands in your glass. It’s never a bad thing to taste it, and after you do, there’s no penalty for saying, “Mmm” or “Wow, my life officially just began,” but no server expects such a proclamation. She wants to know if the wine she just poured for you is spoiled or unspoiled. Just tell her that it’s good (as opposed to being spoiled), and let her pour the other glasses and be on her way. Don’t even give that cork the time of day.
If, for some reason, you don’t like the wine you ordered, here are two dead-language words for you: caveat emptor. It’s not a restaurant’s responsibility to take back wine — or food — that you ordered because suddenly it doesn’t suit your tastes. A restaurant should take back food that has been improperly prepared, according to the description you understood or the instructions you gave. A restaurant should do the same with bad wine, as long as it’s objectively bad — not stylistically bad. The bad wine has to be corked, or oxidized, or cooked or something that makes it clearly sick. It can’t just be untalented, disappointing or a poor fit for your food or mood.
Show the server you know what you’re doing by ignoring the cork and simply smelling the wine before giving your approval. A head nod will do the trick. You’re not going to come across many spoiled wines in your life, and if you do come across one and don’t even notice, it won’t kill you. Sniff the wine, and if something doesn’t seem right, run it by your server. Otherwise, let her pour. Before you leave, drop that cork into your pocket as a keepsake, and if curiosity gets the best of you later that night, give it a whiff. What you choose to sniff in the privacy of your own home is your own business.
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