I was witness to an epic battle taking place. The scene of the conflict was the bar of the iconic 112-year-old Clube Nacionale in downtown Panjim, Goa.
In 2014, part of the building collapsed, fortunately without causing injury to anyone, but after three years of restoration work the Clube, patronised by the gentry of Old Goa and as far off the raucous tourist track as you can get, was restored to its former elegant glory.
Bunny and I were visiting it for dinner, and had brought along a bottle of Crucillon Garnacha-Tempranillo, a favourite of ours, to have with our meal and for which corkage had graciously been waived.
It was the Crucillon that was the cause of the conflict I was watching and which involved the bottle itself, and three of the restaurant’s wait staff, one of whom grappled with the bottle on the bar counter, while a second attacked its cork-plugged neck with a corkscrew, and a third stood on the sidelines shouting instructions, interspersed with imprecations in Konkani directed, sequentially, at his colleagues, at bottles in general, and at the vagaries of Fate which had brought him to this moment of destiny.
The threesome finally got the bottle opened, and as I listened to their exultant exclamations at a hard-won victory, I was made to wonder, once again, by what travesty of logic people continue to stopper wine bottles with corks when screw top caps do the job equally well and occasion far less PTSD, Post Trauma Stress Disorder, than do martial encounters involving the use of corkscrews.
As I listened to their exclamations at a hard won victory, I was made to wonder, once again, by what travesty of logic people continue to stopper wine bottles with corks
I’ve seen resolute men, and even more redoubtable women, overcome by hand-wringing helplessness or, conversely, by vengeful, and equally ineffectual, wrath when confronted with the task of extracting an intractable cork out of a bottle, often with the uncooperative aid of instruments resembling those used for purposes of interrogation by the Spanish Inquisition, or those to be found in present-day dental clinics for root canal procedures, which perhaps amount to much the same thing.
Professional somms – a species occupying a more elevated rung on the ladder of evolution than ordinary mortals – employ a nifty gadget called the ‘waiter’s friend’ to extricate corks out of bottles, with a most satisfying accompanying pop of accomplishment, often performing this feat of legerdemain single-handedly, with an elegant flick of the wrist.
But I suspect that such performances belong to the arcane realm of the conjurer’s art of deceptive sleight-of hand which eludes the eye of the most diligent of observers, and are to be attempted by lesser breeds without the lore at their own peril.
So why, in the face of such adversarial response, do vintners persist in bunging corks into bottles?
I recall reading somewhere that it’s all part of a conspiracy hatched by Spain, which grows shade trees to protect vineyards from the fierceness of summer sun, and the bark of which is used for the manufacture of corks, thereby obtaining two benefits from a single source.
However, that doesn’t explain why wine producers of other countries would buy into this vinous version of castles in Spain, thereby incurring the risk of their produce being ‘corked’ by the fungus which often infects this organic product and contact with which can turn a prized Grand Cru into Grand Crud.
It is largely to obviate this hazard that some countries use artificial corks which are not subject to such blights. But that still leaves unresolved the basic problem of exfiltrating an obstinate plug out of the neck of a stubbornly resistant bottle.
The answer seems to be pure snobbery, which increasingly is part and parcel of the manufactured mystique surrounding oenophilia.
A bottle that comes with a cork – preferably one which comes from a tree, and not from a factory – is seen as a mark of sophistication, a status symbol, while a screwtopped bottle smacks of the parvenu or arriviste who can’t tell the difference between a Malbec and a Merlot, or a Burgundy and a Beaujolais, and is a perfect target for the snob.
And the best way to deal with snobbery is snubbery. Corks? Screw ’em.
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