Unsoft's List

h o m e g r o w n

Monday night, I stopped at the Delaware Street Kroger's on my way home from work to pick up a few inconsequentials - mostly items applied to one end or the other of a baby. In addition, I succumbed to an impulse to snag a bottle of Cabernet, produced in Nicholas County, WV by a vintner I'm somewhat acquainted with on a personal level.

I remembered tasting a sip at the winery on a visit, and as I recalled, it wasn't the most refined thing I'd ever tasted, but it had a decent body and was better than I expected. That impression actually festered into some sort of perception of rugged appeal over the few years since, romantic and memory-revisionist that I am.

Anywho, just after the blessed baby bedtime, my wife and I retired to our little hideaway for a glass and a smoke. The following is a brief description of the events that followed.

I was disappointed to discover that the cork was that urethane synthetic crap that you find plugging most wine just barely above shitty enough to rate a screw-top. I always imagine some duct-tape aficionado squirting GREAT-FOAM expanding insulation down the neck of the bottle, right out of the red aerosol can.

Determined to enjoy my vino, I employed my grandfather's old corkscrew to extricate the offending bottle plug. The art of using a real corkscrew as opposed to some semi-mechanical bottle opening system is one I encourage and support, but the satisfaction derived from the process is definitely compromised when you twist into some substance-free synthetic pseudocork.

I "worked through the pain" and popped the bottle, anticipating an aroma reminiscent of my Grandfather's homemade table wine, and I did detect such an aroma, but it was layered with a strong odor that I might loosely characterize as indicative of contamination.

To be more specific, the offending smell was equal parts ozone and petroleum, like somebody washed out an electric motor with WD40 and added some of this to the fermenting grapes. The best single source I can relate is the smell I remember associating with the HO scale electric train set I played with as a kid some 3 decades ago.

I went ahead and braved a sip, just to make sure I wasn't oversensitive, having a "brain tumor moment" or simply insane. No such luck. It tasted very close to the the way it smelled. I could still taste the wine in the mix too, but as any wastewater engineer can attest, a little bit of something very bad can go a long way.

So I'm left wondering at the source of the contamination - if it is a systematic thing and, most importantly, if I should make the vintner aware of it or just let it go. I wouldn't even consider taking legal action if I found the ever-popular severed fingertip in there, but a "heads up" to the producer might be warranted.

I kept the unused portion for whatever reason. Future chemical analysis, bragging rights, souvenir value, or maybe I secretly fantasize that if I keep this one bottle out of circulation I'm "taking one for the team" so to speak.

It does have a "West Virginia Grown" sticker on the side. "West Virginia Grown, Slightly Contaminated" describes me as accurately as any other label I could apply.