West Side Wine

I love it when this happens. A young, rather arrogant gentleman walks into the store with a WSW bag containing a bottle of wine. No hello, no pleasantries. He simply walks up to me, slams the bottle on the counter and says, “I purchased this bottle of wine yesterday and it’s ‘corked’!” 

Now, I don’t have a problem with exchanging any bottle of wine that is in some way not right. It happens. So I remove the bottle from the bag in order to taste it for myself. As I look at the bottle and start to unscrew the cap….you know where I’m going with this.

So I  informed him in, my inimitable fashion, that in order for a wine to be corked, it needs a cork. Oops.  You could see the arrogance melt away and humiliation taking its place.  I gave him the courtesy of tasting the wine, and told him that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.  But he was in up to his neck and he wasn’t going to back down.  “Well, I find this wine unsatisfactory,” was his response.  

Okaaay.  Now we were into the face saving mode, and this was becoming a no-win situation. But I had to get another shot in.  “This is a fantastic Zinfandel, but maybe the grape isn’t for you. And by the way, in the future, here’s what you should be looking for in a corked wine, besides a cork.”  I proceeded to give him a “Corked 101″ lesson, along with half  his money back (stupid, I know, but the embarrassment was worth it) and sent him on his way.  The two people that were standing there waiting to pay had a lot of fun with it, so I ended up getting my money’s worth.

Word to the wise:  If you think something’s wrong with a wine, just say “I’m not sure, is there something wrong with this wine?”  That will get you a lot more than a red face and some snickering. 

Cheers.