"Deadend" > wrote in message
om...
> Long time lurker, first time poster.
>
> So I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and travel up to the wine
> country quite often, as do some of my friends. So one of my pals goes
> up there and apparently, from what they tell me, they stopped by one
> tasting room, and it was during normal business hours, and they were
> closed. They determined that the place must have gone out of business,
> as these are som unfortunate times for certain smaller and lesser
> known businesses I believe. So while they were getting back in their
> car, they saw that the dumpster was full, overflowing with junk. Some
> of that junk was HUGE sealed bags of UNUSED corks. So they grabbed two
> bags of them, and brought them back for me. They didn't tell me about
> them right away, and I was absolutely excited about it. I asked them
> if there were any more, and they said that "the dumpster was full of
> bags of corks." But by that time, the trash had most likely been
> emptied. Argh!
>
> So these two bags were still sealed, and I opened one up (looks like a
> gross to me) and they are nice looking corks, not composites, or
> composites with cork discs on each end, but solid corks. So I've been
> thinking about using them, but then I thought to myself, "Well, what
> if they weren't from an out of business vineyard? What if they were
> tossing these because there was something WRONG with them? Why risk my
> wine on them?" But I then thought, "Relax, don't worry, have some
> homemade wine. They're probably OK."
>
> Any way I can tell? I smell them and they smell...well...like corks.
> They look...you know, like corks.
>
> Plus, two gross would almost get me through this year's run. Free
> would be a good price.

If they came in a sealed bag it's safe to assume they are OK.

Tom S