Shitty situation.
I opened a bottle of wine for a customer, 2009 Tignanello. It’s like $200 for them to buy, a pretty sizable purchase I’d say. Immediately upon pulling the cork, from the aroma I thought fuck, this is corked for sure.
At least it’s how the wine smelled from within the bottle, anyway I pour it for the taster. She says nothing. I really don’t think I’m wrong, but I don’t say anything. I go to the kitchen to do some work. After a few minutes I go back to the table, they mention the wine might be off and ask me to try it; yeah that’s corked AF. I go get another bottle, it’s in a much better state, I replace the bottle and everyone is happy. But I feel like shit. Do I have the obligation to share my opinion of the state of the wine? If I think it’s corked, should I mention it to them? This is where I’m torn. Who says that first, me or them? Obviously if I say that, they will take my word for it no matter what, and we’re out $70 for the bottle (cost of doing business?) My conscience says that I should have told them my opinion, especially because it was so clear to me.
On the other hand there’s a story I read about in a book 4 or 5 years ago called Secret of the Sommeliers:
A man and his wife are out for dinner, it’s probably a special occasion like an anniversary, and they end up ordering a grand cru white Burgundy, It’s probably like $500 on the list, an older vintage too, it cant easily be replaced. The sommelier pops the cork on it and thinks it might be a bad bottle. He pours it, the older couple say nothing. 10 minutes goes by and he goes to visit the table again, maybe his conscience told him this is the right thing to do; so he said to the couple
“I believe this bottle is not expressing what it should [aromatics, flavors], because there was a problem with its cork, here is the same wine, this bottle is tasting proper”.
The couple go along with it, they perhaps didn’t seem to mind either way, but in his heart he felt he did the right thing. Eventually the couple finish their meal and he returns to them to say goodbye. He asks how everything was, and they replied:
“Well, we really wish you hadn’t taken our wine away. We really liked it, and the one you replaced it with wasn’t as good, so we’re a little disappointed with that”
Sunken heart, deep sorrow, fuck — he probably felt like a bag of shit. I totally relate to that emotion, and I get what the customer says 100%, and I get his reasoning 100% too.
From reading this book, I’ve weighed in on the situation and kept my mouth shut. If I open a bottle of wine and I think it’s corked, I pour it for the trial taste. If the customer doesn’t say anything and enjoys drinking the wine, great.
So here’s the problem? Upon opening the second bottle and pouring it for them, I mention that it did indeed smell funky when I pulled out the cork on the first one. I didn’t say anything because… (I told them that story) but I’m glad they noticed and that I could fix the situation for them. One of the customers said something like … “for you guys it’s a win-win, because if we don’t notice it was off, you can sell us a bad bottle of wine and no one knows but you” That’s what got me. He said it very jokingly, and at the end of the night they seemed to have left genuinely happy and impressed with it all.
From the moment I heard that sentence to when I was falling asleep, my mental state was bludgeoned with sorrow? guilt? I don’t even know what emotion it is. Even if it was meant as a total joke, it’s exactly true. It’s not that I’m trying to pawn off obviously bad wine onto an unsuspecting person (but if I don’t say anything, it is though?), it’s that there is a chance that they would have liked it more than the next bottle I could bring? Even typing that out makes me feel I’m writing a lie, who would like a bottle of corked wine over a proper one? Some people in a book did, and I’m torn…
guys, wat do?
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