Burning tip of cork before bottling?

[sDarrouzet]

Hi,

I was chatting with a friend recently and they mentioned having had a great wine with the inside of its cork burned. I had never heard of this before and was wondering if anyone else knew anything about it...

Thanks!

 

[Runningwolf]

Welcome to the forum. I have not heard of burnt cork but I wonder if it does something for flavor.

Doing a quick Google search, this is all I could find on burnt corks...

...i know its been covered here before, but I tried it for the first time my last time out and I loved using burnt wine cork to camo my face. Not nearly as messy as greasy face paint and easily wipes off with a damp cloth or baby wipes back at the truck. Give it a try, cheap and easy...


Sorry

 

[Wade E]

Never heard of this either. Was he sure it was burned as Ive seen some corks that had soaked up some wine and became very very dark a few times.

 

[wyntheef]

not sure if this was a burnt cork, but on opening a bottle of wine for a friend recently(was told it was a 50.00 bottle), the business end of the cork looked almost gooey. never saw anything like it before and wondered aloud if it was cork taint (which I wouldn't know it if I saw it anyway). So of course we drank the wine and it seemed like a very nice rich wine to me with no bad tastes or whatever.
I'm wondering what the benefit of scorching thje end of a cork would be???

 

[djrockinsteve]

During the roman empire they would dip burnt toast into the wne to take away some of it's bitterness. This is one possibility but honestly never heard of it before.

Let us know if you discover why.

 

[AlFulchino]

i wonder if it has in its roots the idea of toasting the cork to deliver something along the lines of a toasted barrel...another idea is that maybe somewhere in history the idea that a toasted cork seals better...maybe older corks had some issues....hypothesizing here

 

[sDarrouzet]

Haha thanks Runningwolf, that's about all I could find on google as well...

I guess it's possible that he just assumed it was burned and was really just stained, but who knows...

If I had to guess why they would burn the end it would be to maybe help buffer out some acids or other chemicals since there's charcoal in water filters and such. Or maybe it's intended to add a hint of flavor? soot flavor? hahaha

Maybe i'll try it on a bottle of mine and see if anything turns out differently...

 

[sDarrouzet]

That's another good idea, AlFulchino, it's definitely possible that it was a seal problem back in the day and just turned into a tradition with some wineries. I can't really find any info on if people still do it though.

 

[AlFulchino]

here is one last idea .....it could have been a winemakers way of know what wine was his....lets say there were no labels and a certain wine maker had some bottles disappear..maybe he had a not so good friend he would go to his house for a sunday visit and be served wine and dinner....and the burnt cork tipped off the real winemaker when his friend popped the cork!