Kathleen Burk - Is This Bottle Corked?: The Secret Life of Wine

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WE, THE AUTHORS, would not so much as contemplate physical violence toward wine waiters. We do, however, send wine back, sometimes because it is corked. At this point, we note that corking or cork taint is a fault of the wine, not of the bottle. Our title, therefore, relies on the figure of speech (subclass trope) metonymy, in which, according to our dictionary, the name of one thing is put for that of another related to it as the bottle for drink. Our title came before our dictionary research, and we are now convinced that our choice of words is an example of morphic resonance as proposed by Rupert Sheldrake, whereby existing patterns influence future ones merely by existing.

There are, of course, ways of arresting the attention of sommeliers other than by throwing a bottle at them. To ensure their respect, we suggest the following dos and donts:

Do send a wine back, saying that it is corked, if it has the characteristic musty smell that resembles mushrooms or the result of striding through the dead leaves of woodlands in the autumn. If the sommelier has sniffed the cork after pulling it, he ought to have already spotted it for you; you might then look him straight in the eye in an inquiring manner as you suggest that it is corked.