This post comes courtesy of Williams-Sonoma associate Steven Lauer.
Ah, the aroma of a cork-tainted wine — a dirty wet dog on a hot summer day, a moldy newspaper that’s been stored in a sauna since before Bush No. 1 was in office. These are not pleasant scents on their own, but having them in your bottle of red wine is a travesty!
Shocked? Read on. I recently had the pleasure of talking with Charlie and Molly Meeker, owners and winemakers for Meeker Winery. Specifically, I wanted to know why they are fans of using screw caps on their wines instead of the more traditional corks and what difference this has made to the quality of their wine.
Meeker wine who? I fell in love with Meeker wines back in the late ’90s when they were operating their tasting room out of an extra-large tepee (seriously, a tepee) on West Dry Creek Road in Sonoma County’s Dry Creek Valley. These days they pour their wines in Geyserville, CA, out of an old bank vault, and their wines — as well as the Meekers themselves — are still full of the same spirit that made their tepee famous.
Now, get ready to meet the Meekers and learn why you shouldn’t be afraid to buy that bottle of red wine with a screw cap.
About the author: Steven works in Williams-Sonoma’s corporate training department. He is a self-described refugee of the American Midwest who came to the Bay Area for work and has since fallen in love with the hearty red wines of Sonoma Valley. Steven balances his wine vices with mountain biking and running in California’s Marin County.
1 comment
It’s completely OK (however maybe undesirable) to drink wine with some plug bits drifting in it. Tragically, this experience isn’t especially exceptional while drinking wine fixed with a characteristic stopper, particularly with more established wines. Normal plugs are finished off from the bark of stopper oaks, so they’re biodegradable natural material, and that implies that they in all actuality do decay over the long haul