In the last 45 years that I have been drinking wine, probably well over a thousand

bottles of wine, I can really say that I have only had 2 bottles of what I had

considered wine that had gone bad and had actually been “corked”. Drinking

a sip of corked wine is something you will never forget once it has happened to

you, trust me on that!

My job allowed me to travel to Northern Spain for a week in March to the town of

Vitoria. It is located just north of the fine wine region of Rioja, where most of the

great reds are grown using the Tampranillo and Granacha verities of grapes. I

arrived there in late afternoon and was greeted by a very fun and interesting guy

and a couple of his co-workers who insisted that we go out for meal at 8:45PM,

which is really late for this old “poop” to eat anything.

I vowed after that last bottle of pinot noir in central England from the up-scale
wine store that I would give up on French wines forever! I really felt that way
too, and did not want to break my resolution. I had been reading my little pocket
guide “The Best Wines in the Super Markets 2010” by Ned [...]

The company that I was working for moved me to Brighton in the UK for several

months so it was basically starting over setting up housekeeping, finding barbers,

dentists, grocery shopping and of course an entire new world of wines to purchase.