Coq Au (corked) Vin

We thought we were in trouble last night. The Gourmand was making a divinely fragrant Coq Au Vin and had just added our favourite red to the pan. And a glass for himself. Then disaster! The Gourmand took a sip of the wine and it was corked!!!!! With everything in the pan & cooking nicely there was no turning back. He gamely soldiered on thinking the worst and that the meal was ruined, but I’ll let him finish that story.

Now what to do with half a bottle of corked red?
Usual course of action is to return the bottle, pour it down the sink, or let it breath in the vain hope that it will go away & then use it for garden fertiliser.

I had come across a post in Tomato about corked wine and an unusual treatment to remove the taint. Lets just say that I was very skeptical about the method they described. With nothing to loose we thought we’d put on our Mythbusters caps and try it.

There were no flaming blowtorches, bullet proof glass screens, or exploding dummies involved. All that was required was a loose ball of Cling-wrap in a glass jug and the tainted wine poured over it. Then leave it. Weird? Simple? Yes to both. Did it work? YES! We left it over night occasionally swirling the wine around in the jug. Apparently the Cling-wrap causes a reaction where the tainted molecules are attracted to the cling wrap & you are left with untained wine (and a soggy ball of Cling-wrap). We compared the “treated” wine with the original glass and, much to our surprise, there was a noticeable improvement. No smell & hardly any tainted taste.

If it had been a full bottle we would have taken back for a replacement and saved ourselves the time, but as it was a half bottle, well, we’ve ended up with a passable wine for cooking or drinking if we were desperate. Still, it was a fun experiment that worked!