Wine Peeps is an independent wine blog dedicated to helping you get the most bang for your buck in wine. We do this through blind tastings of wine from around the world and calculations of 
Wine Word of the Week: Corked
By Kori ~ September 4th, 2008.
This week’s Wine Word of the Week is corked, not to be confused with the term corkage from last week.
Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine:
Corked is the pejorative tasting term for a wine spoiled by a cork stopper contaminated with cork taint. This is one of the most serious wine faults as in most cases it irrevocably imbues the wine with such a powerfully off-putting smell that it cannot be drunk with any enjoyment. ….
Layman’s terms from Kori:
Corked is the term used to describe a wine that has been spoiled by cork taint. Cork taint is most often recognized by the smell of wet cardboard when you sniff the wine. A wine that is corked is essentially ruined. Some experts contend that as many as five percent of all wine bottles opened are flawed by a tainted cork. This fact has led many in the industry to pursue alternative closures such as screwcaps and glass stoppers.
Filed under: Wine Word of the Week
