Gallo Confirms Tainted Wine

Sam D. · 2003-11-06T16:18:03+00:00

An article in the Los Angeles Times reports that Gallo has confirmed thattraces of TCA have been found in wines bottled at its processing facility inSonoma. 90 different Gallo wines totaling nearly 2 million cases a year arebottled there under such labels as Rancho Zabaco, Frei Brothers, Gallo ofSonoma and Louis Martini. The chemical is not a health risk but can producean unpleasant off-taste in the wine.TCA is the abbreviation for trichloroanisole, a chemical byproduct of theinteraction between mold and chlorine, which is used as a cleaning solutionand to bleach corks and oak barrels. Contaminated corks are often a sourceof TCA in bottled wine. One of the mysteries of the Gallo contamination isthat the winery stopped using chlorine as a cleaning agent years agoThe Times article also mentions that Gallo which produces about a third ofCalifornia's wine, is the world's second largest wine producer.I had thought that Gallo was the largest wine company . I was surprised tofind out elsewhere that the world's largest wine company is ConstellationBrands, a name totally unfamiliar to me although I did recognize its winebrands.

Nov 06, 2003 20 Replies

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Scooter 22 years ago

Do you mean "Peter Vella"? That's a gallo product also...

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Gallo Confirms Tainted Wine

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