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Corked wines redux

Opened a bottle of Faury St Joseph 2000 last night and while it underwhelmed me I wasn't too upset, My wife on the other hand took one sip and said "this is off!" As it wasn't too bad, I drank some with dinner she drank water. Long and short was the realization that for some a little TCA goes a long way and for others it just seems to cut the legs off of the wine a bit. I noticed less nose, less flavor (esp the characteristic smokyness of a St. Joseph) the color and appearance in the glass; however, were fine.

Two nights before we had a fantastic (esp for 6.99USD close out price) Barbera d' Asta which was full of fruit and filled the room when the cork came out. I was wishing for more last night.

Reason for mentioning all of this is to point out again that TCA is relative to ones sensitivity. I drank a lot of wine in my time which was tainted and didn't realize it until I was shown a bottle that was and compared it to the uncorked version in a horizontal of sorts.

Reply to
jcoulter
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Increasingly I've come to the same realization. My wife is regularly complaining about barnyard or "wet dog" flavors while I soldier on and try to convince her that it is a "terroir" characteristic or a "typical" of the region taste. Clearly I'm a bit less sensitive than she (and maybe we've now got a statistical basis for sensitivity related to gender--two samplings so far...)

I noticed the difference recently on some bottles of Les Caves de la Colombe Vacqueyras 2001. I had begun to believe that flatness of flavor and the unpleasant mustiness was characteristic of this relatively inexpensive Rhone, then I opened a bottle that showed cleanly and finally had the "eureka moment" that a high percentage of these were corked.

OTOH, my wife has virtually no tolerance for maderization. She scorns and refuses to drink anything that shows a "sherry" flavor. Often this is not a flaw and she recently missed out on a great Bollinger Grande Annee that was loaded with it--just left more for me!

Ed Rasimus Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret) "When Thunder Rolled"

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Reply to
Ed Rasimus

All the more reason for people to jump on the screwcap bandwagon, IMO.

Reply to
cutecat

I just don't understand the problem of cooking with tainted wine. Why would you drink tainted wine when you cook as opposed to any other time. Didn't Julia really say, "I always cook with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food that I am cooking". :-)

Reply to
Pantheras

What is "tainted"? TCA shows up as a bad taste when drinking wine, but in cooking it evaporates away and becomes undetectable. And in any case it is not toxic in the minute quantities that are involved here. So why not cook with it? 99.9999% of the bottle is still good...

I always keep my TCA tainted wines for cooking.

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

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Reply to
Mike Tommasi

The same is true for Brettanomyces. Some people like the "earthiness" of a bit of brett, while some are repulsed by it.

Andy

Reply to
AyTee

Is it really this hard to find any humor in this group. Joe Beppe and I are going to have to recruit some more spammers to get the humor back. Bill

Reply to
Bill Loftin

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