What happens when the cookie...or cork crumbles

A few weeks ago while in Winter Park, I had to run out to get wine for an office meeting. I went with my co-worker Cathy to pick up a few bottles and noticed they had a clearance table of wines that were 2 for $10.....

Cathy asked me if I had heard of one of the wines on this table, 2005 Imagine Chardonnay. No. She started reading the back label, about how it was for a charity and then I heard her the words "Chalk Hill". I stopped in my tracks.

Chalk Hill Chardonnay for $5?! What on earth is going on here. So of course, the wino that I am, I had to pick up two bottles for myself., two bottles for the office and talk Cathy into buying two bottles for herself. We asked the nice man behind the counter if he had ever tried this wine, as I was having serious problems grasping that Chalk Hill was only $5. He mentioned they had "a few" bottles come back with crumbled corks.

I put the wine in my wine fridge and made sure it was getting liquid to the cork. Two weeks later, I dove into it.

2005 Chalk Hill Imagine Chardonnay

When I tried to open the bottle, the cork crumbled into pieces. I sat there dumbfounded and not sure what to do. I have a Rabbit wine opener and the cork literally disintegrated when I tried to pull it out. Half of it was stuck on the bottle, the other was floating in my wine. Drum Roll Please! Bounty Paper Towels and a measuring cup with a fat strainer to the rescue. Don't judge.

Amazingly enough, one single Bounty sheet handled the entire bottle of wine! Maybe the will make a commercial out of this. Lord my hands look old....then again I was straining wine and taking photos at the same time.

You can see what remained from the cork floating in the almost empty bottle wine.Thank goodness Gabe was at the gym during this project or I would never have heard the end of this.

After it was all said and done, Imagine by Chalk Hill is a pretty good wine. I am sure it would have been a hundred times better without the flavors of crumbled cork and Bounty Paper Towel!

OK so this picture is from a few years back and my hair is much shorter. And in this particular photo, I am drinking Cakebread Chardonnay, not Chalk Hill and I am on a Cruise Ship, not sitting at home. But I didn't have a photo of the final product, so you get a repeat! Cheers!