What a Corker (not!)

This blog post is verrrryyyy old - I had to wait for photos!!


This weekend we were in Gwangju, and decided to buy a couple of bottles of wine and watch a film in the room (we really are the last of the big spenders) as there was nothing good on at the cinema. As we have had bad experiences in the past with wine - ie it's shit - we decided to just buy wine that we had tasted in the supermarket and liked. We even brought our corkscrew - how's that for preparation?! Luckily there were 2 nice bottles of wine to be tasted in the shop and we liked them both so decided to treat ourselves and have 2 bottles. The red bottle was a screw top, the white was a cork. The lovely assistant even gave us a free pourer and corkscrew - things couldn't be better!

Later on, we decided to have some white and went to remove the cork. Neither of us are particular adept at this, but we know how to get a cork out of the bottle... or so we thought! After about 20 minutes trying to open the bottle, cork was flying everywhere (all over the hotel room floor and floating in the wine bottle), and glass was also everywhere (the brim of the bottle had smashed too), but try as we might, we couldn't open the thing! I wanted to admit defeat and die, but Greg decided we should take it back to the shop and try and swap it for a new one. I thought this was a stupid idea as 1) We didn't have a receipt and 2) It was obvious that we had corked and pounded the bottle to oblivion. Greg, however, took the approach that this is Korea and so anything goes.

Smashed bottle top and really dirty floor!

Of course he was right and an hour later we were stood at the EMart customer service desk, waving a bottle of broken wine at them and yelling 'broken, broken'. This was preceeded by me having a face off with a Korean kid in a trolley who was looking at me funny (this place really does drive you INSANE!). The staff clearly thought we were mental but for some reason gave us a new bottle anyway - victory! (or so we thought).

Back at the hotel, we started again, we even got advice from the internet of the exact right way to remove the cork (the same way we had practiced earlier). Unfortunately, Korea/the World hates us and the cork started to crumble again, and again! I gave up shortly afterwards but Greg was hacking the cork with various corkscrews/knifes and was looking like he would fight it to the death! Guttingly the cork won and whilst Greg did get wine to come out, it was just a tiny bit of wine amongst a sea of corkage! In the end I made him give up and we threw the lovely wine into the stupid bin - we were gutted. Greg wanted to go back for a third time but I didn't, so that was that. I didn't know whether we were the blame or the wine, or a bit of both, but I like to think it was the wine.

Moral of the Story - Don't buy corked wine in Korea if you are a pair of unlucky buggers who do not work in a restaurant or something!

EEEWWW Cork!!