Taste it, you will know. If the wine is corked ie. has reacted with the cork and tastes bad you cant miss it.

Just look on the top of the bottle! :-)

TCA, the compound that causes "cork taint", is detectable to the human nose in very small amounts (I don't recall the exact number, but it is measured on the scale of PPM - parts per million). If you don't know what cork taint smell like, try this: Take a stack of newspapers or unwanted cardboard and spray down with your garden hose. Take the sodden mass into your basement (or other dark, enclosed, largely unused spot) and forget about it for at least a week. When you remember it, go to the stack and smell it. This should smell remarkably like cork taint and you will immediately recognize it when you come across it in your wine glass. If you should run across a corked bottle, leave as much wine in the bottle as possible (don't pour it down the drain or drink it - it won't hurt you, it just won't be enjoyable) and then take it back to the retailer that you bought it from. If you are in a restaurant, send it back.

If you turn the bottle completly upside down and none pours out, it is stll corked. If it pours out all over your shoes it is uncorked. No, wait! That was a Fawlty Towers bit wasn't it? Corked wine has been described as having a 'wet basement' smell, or a 'moldy carboard' taste. I reckon you can transpose smell and taste there. The acid of the wine has reacted with the cork and released some of the cork qualities. Cork is tree bark, so the cardboard idea makes sense. Sometimes 'corking' leats air into the bottle so the 'musty' is from molds and yeastds and such in the air. Only one time did I experience 'corked' wine, at the restaraunt one of our party called the waiter over and said the wine was corked. I thought he was showin off, I mean he ordered wine and I'm a beer drinker. But anyway I asked to smell it and it reminded me of wet newspapers, papers that had been rained on and layed around a day or two. The waiter sent over the wine steward, who was really just the bartender, he smelled, didn't raise the glass as high as his chin and said ,'oh yeah, that's no good.' Don't know if he knew what he was talkin about either, at any rate he sent over a freee replacement bottle, so mebbee it really was just a creative plot by my snobby friend.

It has a cork in the hole :)