Dogs that are able to detect cork taint in bottles of wine are being trialled in a number of top-end London restaurants.

These beagles will patrol the floor during service, alerting sommeliers to the presence of TCA by barking. The cork dogs have been trained by dog breeder Oliver Daniels.

'After a long day training spaniels to detect explosives I sat down to relax with a bottle of claret, only to find it corked,' said Daniels. 'That's when the idea came to me. For the next fortnight I exposed a number of breeds to TCA-infected corks, as well as damp cardboard – the notoriously foul aroma of a corked wine.'

If the trial goes well, Daniels plans not only to supply top restaurants throughout the country, but to train them to detect other wine faults too. 'The farmyard aromas associated with Brettanomyces are proving rather tricky though,' he said.

News item from Imbibe.com, 01-04-2010