A Boarding Pass for Mr. Russell and a Tainted Bottle of Wine

Thanks to a good win on Thursday night against the Springfield Armor (coached by Dee Brown, who did not wear Reebok Pumps during the game and only twice buried his eyes in the crook of his arm like he was at the Slam Dunk Contest), we find our heroes at 10-16. Not insignificantly, we are 0-6 against the best team in the D-League - the Iowa Energy- and 10-10 against the rest of the league. Furthermore, even though we are 6 games below .500, we are only 3.5 games out of the playoffs. Looking at our team, we have four good big men, two decent wings, two very good shooting guards and a couple of scoring point guards. Our most glaring weakness is the lack of a true point guard; one that can control the tempo and get his teammates open shots.

We had that point guard last year in Walker Russell Jr., who set the D-League record for assists before traipsing off to Sophia, Bulgaria this year. To our surprise, his team released him two weeks ago because they ran out of money and we have obviously been on pins and needles ever since. We should find out in the next day or two whether he will indeed rejoin the team but he evidently has a big offer in China that he will likely take.

So, hoping against the odds that Walker will be on a plane headed back to Fort Wayne, I opened a bottle of Boarding Pass Shiraz from South Australia that I found for $18.99 at one of the nicer wine shops in town. For you Fort Wayners, the Belmont Beverage on Dupont has a nice selection and for those of you outside of Fort Wayne it should be available nearly nationwide at upscale wine shops. It is also important to note that the wine is a screw top. Much to Jaileer's chagrin (see his comments from my last blog), I am not going to fully address the magic of screw tops in this blog but rather I am going to discuss tainted wine, often referred to as "corked" wine. This is a massive subject, but it is incredibly important in the world of wine, so please bear with me.

When smelling wine, many descriptors are used: fruit, chocolate, soil, tobacco, cola, etc. Not often used are words such as wet cardboard, mold, and feet, even though these words can be just as accurate for some wines. These smells are typically present when an unopened bottle is tainted, making it unpleasant to smell and positively awful - though not harmful - to drink.

Wines are most often tainted by a cork coming into contact with a some sort of contaminant, causing the cork to produce TCA, which seeps into the wine (you will have to be satisfied with that explanation, as the chemistry behind TCA is entirely beyond my limited intellect). Wines can also become ruined by defective corks that allow air into the bottle, oxidizing the wine. Oxidation can also occur when wine is not stored on its side: with the wine not touching the cork, the cork dries out and shrinks just enough to allow oxygen to pass into the bottle. Screw tops are not immune to oxidation, as they can be dropped (or have something dropped on them), causing the seal to be broken and allowing air into the bottle.

Such was the case with the Boarding Pass Shiraz: the wine had an incredibly unpleasant nose, and once I smelled dirty socks I knew I needed to investigate further. True to my hunch, there was a small dent in the cap indicating that something had banged against the top of the bottle, breaking its airtight seal.

While all of this talk of smelly socks and wet cardboard is important, it is part of the broader issue of making sure that you, the wine consumer, do not get stuck paying for a spoiled bottle of wine. Between 5 and 10% of wine worldwide is tainted, meaning that as many as 1 in 10 bottles that you drink is spoiled. With that in mind, it is important for you to be vigilant in checking for tainted wine.

When ordering wine at a nice restaurant, a server will pour a small amount of wine in your glass before pouring the rest of the table. This is your opportunity to smell the wine to make sure that it is not spoiled. This is NOT an invitation to taste the wine to see if you like it, so for the love of God please do not taste the wine and then give your server a two thumbs up sign. In fact, if the wine is not tainted, then the server will fill the rest of your party's glasses before returning to fill yours, which is technically the first point at which you should drink your wine.

If, however, you suspect that the wine is tainted then you need to alert your server, who will either confirm it himself or will ask the sommelier for a second opinion (do not do this at TGI Friday's, as their servers have had the same amount of training in wine as I have had in nuclear physics). Regardless of their opinion, if you suspect the wine is tainted you should insist on a replacement bottle - though it must be the same wine you originally ordered. If you bought the wine at a store, you should return the bottle within 24 hours of opening it.

Do not let the restaurant or store clerk bully you into paying for a bottle that you believe to be tainted, as sending a wine back will not cost them any money. Once a bottle is sent back, the restaurant notifies their distributor who will replace the spoiled bottle. The distributor is also not out any money because they simply tell the winery and the winery will provide them with additional stock. Lest you fear that the winery is losing money on the deal, know that the winery has already built the cost of these tainted bottles into the price of the wine, meaning that it is ultimately the consumer who pays to insure the restaurant, distributor and winery against spoilage.

Knowing that, do you wonder why we support an industry that tolerates a 10% failure rate for its products? What if seat belt manufacturers were satisfied with their products working right only 90% of the time? Fortunately, some wineries are eschewing the tradition and romance of cork in favor of the significantly more reliable screw top, which I will address in a future blog.

In the meantime, I must get back to selling tickets and praying that Walker magically appears in a Mad Ants uniform.