Sending Back Wine
If you get a corked bottle of wine at a restaurant, don’t be afraid to send it back. Bill Daley of The Chicago Tribune points out that the ultimate responsibility lies with the winery and not with you, the restaurant, or the distributor. If the restaurant gives you lip or insists that they will lose money on the bottle, then tell them to reseal the leftover wine in the bottle and to take it back to the distributor for credit.
In fact, this holds true for pretty much any wine that you buy. If it’s corked, take it back. As Robert Houde, a general manager of a distributor, says, “If there is a bad batch of corks out there, they need to know it—the same way a car company needs to know when to recall cars for faulty equipment.” Really, it’s a courtesy.
July 19th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
I think the big problem with this is not that people are afraid to send it back, but they don’t know when a wine is corked. Plenty of wines can be corked and still taste decent, just not the way it’s *supposed* to taste.
The biggest hint (besides an obviously tainted cork with wine stains all the way up) is the mildewy smell. On the cork front, they hand it to you not so you can sniff it, but so you can look at it.