I just celebrated my 40th birthday with black balloons and a surprise party (it wasn't entirely a surprise because Tim engaged in suspicious atyical house cleaning activities beforehand, but nontheless the unexpected shouting of "surprise!" procured a loud profanity from my mouth which seemed to please everyone.)
One of my former students, Fred, a former brilliant chef turned doctor of pharmacy student (I am so proud that he is studying capscaicin! And I showed him his first benzene ring! Parental pride...) showed up with a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-pape, which I was really looking forward to trying, because I had read good things about it. Sadly, Fred pronounced the bottle corked, so I never got to learn what it was like.
I lay awake at night wondering what could be the corky molecules? It smells and tastes like wet god, I mean wet dog (yes I am dyslexic but that is so funny I could not erase it), not that I have ever tasted a wet dog. What makes a wine taste corked? A month later, I decided to look this up. It is apparently TCA, or trichloroanisole:
Looks a bit PCB-ish, doesn't it? It is apparently the result of an airborne fungus (OK, which one?) metabolizing chlorine contaminants (pollutants and herbicides) from cork trees. There you go.
