Posted at 20:47h in Wine industry by David Rhodes 0 Comments
I was on my way to Haifa last night (from Ra’anana) with a friend who shall remain nameless (his wife gets upset when I mention his drinking online but many of our mutual friends will guess who he his anyways). And since I’ve been told drinking is legal in Israel in a car (for the passengers at least) and there’s no open container law (although flaunting it might still get you pulled over or hassled at a DUI roadblock) I often take a bottle for a long ride.
Also we were going to a favorite bar, ELi’s Pub on Jaffa Rd. in Haifa to listen to their Monday Night Jam sessions (no cover charge and great jazz/rock/blues musicians) that lets me bring my own wine (after paying a corkage charge).
So I opened the bottle along the way ( a mistake…I should have opened it before leaving my apartment) and on the road it became painfully obvious that the bottle I was opening (2007 Tishbi Single Vineyard “Petite Syrah”) had a bad cork. Now by a bad cork I don’t mean the cork was infected by bacteria TCA, trichloroanisole, that can infect a natural cork so that a wine ends up with a taste of wet newspaper but rather that probably by my own fault of storing the bottle standing up the cork had dried out. Typically I store a bottle horizontally instead of vertically so the wine keeps the cork moist but I had thought I would have drunk this wine much sooner and now I was suffering for my poor planning.
As I attempted to extract the cork with a conventional waiter’s corkscrew (which most professionals prefer particularly for its advantages for dealing with problem corks where some fancier gadgets prove useless in such a pinch) the cork started to crumble into flakes so much so I couldn’t get a grip on any of the cork. If I was somewhere I could stand up and was lit and I wasn’t afraid of spilling a little wine (unlike sitting down in a dark fairly new car) I could have extracted the cork remnants slowly and precariously with a likely probability of getting it open without much or any cork getting in the bottle. But this cork was a real SOB and I knew if I wanted a glass of wine in the car for the ride I was going to have to get creative if I didn’t want a mouthful of cork in each sip and swallow of a wine that retails for NIS 130 or about $40.
As a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I do recall the perfect item to carry if you have only one item to carry as you travel around the universe, a towel but I had no towel but I did have a clean kercheif which in this case was even more ideal of a tool for this situation.
I bit the bullet and forced the cork or what little was left into the bottle and I took my kerchief and draped it into my glass creating a nice filter as I poured myself a glass. Any cork that would have gone into the glass was caught by the kerchief and I poured myself and my friend a glass.
And we were both awarded by a great glass of 2007 Tishbi Petite Sirah Single Vineyard (91 points) that was fruit forward with bold blackberries and raspberries expressing integrated tannins and fragrant smokey oak and vanilla in a pleasantly lingering finish. The wine seemed at first like maybe I opened it just as it was starting to peak but as the wine decanted in the bottle as well as my glass the wine did still open up a bit showing it still might have aged for another few years.
Even better than enjoying the bottle of the course of the evening on the ride to and during a great jam session was knowing that I rescued a very good bottle of wine from being served in a way that would have diminished all the good craftsmanship that had been exercised in the vineyard and the winery to bring this wine to fruition.
Often a sommelier at restaurant isn’t merely judged for as much by how he can pair and suggest wines for diners but how he can handle problems with bad bottles and corks as they arise. Who knew this California trained sommelier would get to play MacGiver and overcome a serving mishap one day on the road to Haifa?
