Unnecessary practice: So you don’t need to smell mushrooms in the restaurant

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The freshly picked wine cork lies there like a hunted animal. Many restaurant visitors think that the service staff is asked to smell it. Since you don’t want to give the impression that you are a wine amateur, you take the cork between your fingers and smell it respectfully.

So what is a wine cork supposed to smell like? That’s right, like mushrooms and wine. But it’s not entirely clear what’s so exciting about it. Now as a guest you might say “Wow, that’s a nice smelling mushroom!” should you say? and have as respectful a facial expression as possible? We say it clearly: no.

Smelling the mushroom is often unnecessary

The presentation of the cork after opening the wine bottle is quite a spectacle. If, as a restaurant visitor, you still smell the mushroom with concentration, you eventually become a part of it. For us, there are only two reasons to smell or examine a wine cork.

If you get the impression that wine has “cones” when you smell or drink it, you can smell the cork as additional insurance. Because the musty smell of wet cardboard should be felt in the mushroom. That’s why many sommeliers sniff the cork briefly after opening it, as a quality check, so to speak.

For particularly valuable wines, you can examine the cork to determine whether the vintage printed on the label is actually the vintage in the bottle. This is because in most fine wines the vintage is burned directly into the cork. Other than these two reasons, you can easily ignore the cork and focus all your attention on the wine.

Source : Blick