Can you cook with corked wine?

[pkbites]

@BrainGlutton

Don’t know much about wine

No, but in fairness “corked” wine isn’t very common. We drink a lot of different wines, domestic and imported, and only across some corked stuff once. A small winery in Richland Center used screw cap wine for their tasting, but when we bought a case of it we later realized all the bottles had corks, and every bottle was “corked”. Bait and switch. They must have known that because that particular wine was on sale at a huge discount.

It’s not like using sour milk to make pudding. The wine is ruined and useless. The OP had no real choice but to toss it. A shame, though.

[Gray_Ghost]

@FoieGrasIsEvil

Yeah. that seemed outrageous to me as well despite my “skin in the wine game” as of late like you profess that’s sorely lacking. I cannot imagine paying more than about thirty bucks for a Crozes-Hermitage even from a renowned producer.

Part of that restaurant comment about never getting a corked wine sauce is simply because even high end restaurants do not use wines of any appreciable expense to cook with in the first place. Most of the wines for cooking that I have seen have a screw cap and are larger or even jug wines. Even quasi-quaffable low cost wines like two buck chuck with a screw cap are acceptable for cooking with, especially if there’s leftovers from drinking. Hell, I would most certainly at least use the remnants of any wine I was drinking no matter the cost for cooking depending what was at hand and how long it’s been oxidizing. But the vast majority of even the high end places use low cost screw cap wines for cooking. Once a wine is incorporated into a sauce and has been heated, the nuance of a 2000 Bordeaux vs Barefoot Cabernet is utterly lost, and again: using these types of wines with the closures they have eliminates cork taint to begin with [Emphasis added by me and not present in the original quote.] whether or not methods or cooking exists that removes it. I am not familiar with the “drawing out” of TCA using Saran Wrap but maybe there’s been developments I am unaware of…
…The currency difference and shipping costs, and probable limitations on the part of the importer with regards to the US market vs the undoubtedly smaller (but thirsty!) Japanese market are likely factors.

While not using cork as a closure is going to cut down a lot on your TCA incidence, IME it isn’t an absolute guarantee. I’ve picked up cork taint in diet soda and in wines with artificial corks. Did I GC-MS the sample? No, but I smelled the ‘wet newspaper-moldy cardboard’ thing, and there was next to no fruit in wine.

I don’t have the stats to prove it, but I’m willing to bet though that TCA incidence in artificially corked ones or screwcapped ones is going to be a lot less than the 1-2 percent I think Amorim’s gotten it down to. Though I wonder if extracting TCA via supercritical CO2is getting it even lower than that?

As soon as Saturn Dreams mentioned, “Tokyo”, I’d believe pretty much any price tag he wished to say. Guigal’s certainly one that could get top dollar, through coasting off the rep of their distinctive Côte-Rôties IMHO, but still.

Edit, thanks a bunch guys for the Saran Wrap tip! I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m really looking forward to.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

Where else does the TCA come from if there’s no cork involved? I’m seriously out of the loop. Less than sanitary fermentation tanks/machinery/bottles?