After having a half dozen corks fall off my computer desk, I decided it was time to round all of them up... See the pile in the photo. I'd been stashing a bunch of them with the corkscrew and in kitchen drawers, with a few scattered here and there. (One of my dogs has eaten a few, so I try to keep them off the floor.) I counted them up and threw all of them in a box. The totals: 54 standard corks, 11 synthetics, and 14 Champagne/sparkler corks. And while I'm fine with screwcaps for everyday table wine and young whites, I don't tend to keep those--they're kind of flimsy and don't survive well like old beer or soda bottle caps. I'm not consciously saving these things, I just tend to stick them in my pocket or in a drawer after opening wine. Last year, I saved a bunch for a friend of a friend, who is covering his entire kitchen walls with corks. I might make a trivet or something out of these things... And while I probably ought to just throw them away, there's something nice about touching them, seeing the stain on one end, and remembering that wine.
I could make this a sort of Wine Blogger Challenge--gather your corks and sort them out, but I don't think I'm that well known yet... However, if anyone else feels like participating, link back to this post.
2 comments:
I have thousands. I've been collecting them for 6 years. Not that I've been drinking that many bottles of wine... My name is not LUSH...However, I have tons of corks---The beautiful corks from Heitz Cellars '95 Cabernet and '94 Silver Oak and Mount Veeder cabs, to the cute plastic "Murphy Goode & Ready", odd shaped Italian corks, high end, low end, you name it, I have them... I got them at wine tastings I attended where I got to try most of the wines free of charge. So did the public, only most of them could care less about the corks. The corks are a work of art to some wineries...These corks represent the six years it took me to get from wine baby to almost wine connossieur. I got 'em all. What I'm going to do with them is up in the air. So far I've made a couple shadow boxes with the higher end corks. I even put a Charles Shaw cork in with them to fool everyone. Around here, no one knows what "Two Buck Chuck" is so they won't have a clue what it's doing next to my St. Supery Elu cork. For awhile, I stopped asking for them because I was running out of places to put them. But as of this week, I am doing it again. There will be fewer corks made out of actual cork. Better do it now...
It's been over a year since I made the last comment. Since then, I have acquired a Penfolds Grange 1999 cork (OMIGOD! Completely by accident because I didn't even get to try the stuff! It was in a bag of corks a local wine proprietor gave me--and it was pretty fresh...), Sassicaia, Solaia, Pride Mountain Winery (I visited and they gave me a bagful!) etc...After my trip to Napa, I started collecting again. My latest thing is a big ice bucket on the kitchen floor and I just throw them in there... How ironic that the ice bucket says, "Life Is Too Short To Drink Cheap Wine." yet has the word "viognier" spelled wrong... Wine is a passion and one to never forget!!
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