There was a bottle of Kistler Chardonnay brought in on Thanksgiving and it was horridly corked. The family at the table struggled with their denial for a short time, then decided to keep it and serve it (to the women, while the men drank Cabernet Sauvignon, ouch.)

A friend in the wine industry suggested that plastic will remove the taint and suggested we try it after putting the wine in decanter with plastic wrap for two hours. That was news to me. So we wrapped the wine and forgot about it until the next day. I tried it two ways. Saran wrap rolled into a ball in the decanter and a wine glass covered with Saran Wrap.

Result, the wine in the glass had lost a fair amount of cork taint, but it if you were looking for a flaw it was there, if you were looking for beauty, it wasn’t there. Wine doesn’t always taste better the next day . You have to wonder what else the plastic might take out! As for  the decanter, the wine in the decanter was still corked on the nose and judged to be not worthy of tasting.  So as for corked wine, I suggest just returning the bottle. But that isn’t always possible at home on Thanksgiving--where are you going to return the bottle to exactly?

I like the idea of a charcoal filter like the Brita water filter. But as I read the responses about fixing a corked wine mostly I am reading the level of “corkyness” falling. One enthusiast says before on a scale of one to ten the wine had a “corked” taint of six and after the plastic, the taint was a “one” on a scale of one to ten. So he is happy enough. What isn’t being said here in these comments is that if the wine is “Corked” it has been robbed of some if not all of its greatness. Removing, or lessening the taint, is not the same as having the wine drink the way it should as if it had never been corked. Many folks might be happy that the $150 spent on a Grand Cru Burgundy is not totally lost, but that cork-saran wrapped-saved wine will taste like a $30 bottle. So if you can return it and get your money, do so.