The Wine Knows

I opened several wines this morning for a Wine Press Northwest double-blind judging. I was a bit stunned to pull synthetic corks out of two Columbia Crest whites - a Gewurztraminer and a Riesling.

As far as I know, this is the first time a Columbia Crest wine has been under anything but natural corks.

These two wines were topped with Nomacorcs, those foam-filled cork look-alikes that have been gaining in popularity the past few years. Perhaps the highest-profile Northwest winery using Nomacorcs is Ken Wright Cellars, producer of some of Oregon's best and most expensive wines.

What confounded me a bit, however, was the fact that even though these two Crest wines from the 2006 vintage had Nomacorcs, the 2006 Sauvignon Blanc did not. Nor were a couple of reds we opened. They were under natural corks.

I'll need to make some inquiries about this because if Columbia Crest is testing the waters with the idea of converting to synthetic corks, this is a major change in strategy and could mean as many as 24 million more cork-free bottles of wine from Washington each year.