I Hate Corks!!

Yes, once on a champagne cork, of a minor (French) Champagne house. Don't remember which one, though. The wine was OK, it had no discernable taint.

Because for whatever reasons, free SO2 levels in the wine degrade at a much faster pace. After one year there is a marked difference (wine under sythetics are much more evolved), after two years they're almost 100% dead, oxydized.

Not for mid- to long-term agers.

Please, believe us, the cork industry is trying theirs best - but without success.

M.

YOU wrongly called it TCH, even after having been corrected that the substance in question is called TCA: 2,4,6-TriChloroAnisole.

This not a sentence.

Just because you don't believe me, that doesn't prove your point is right. Just try to broaden your mind that 1) cork problems go far beyond discernible TCA; and that 2) bottle variation in 99.99 of the cases is a cork problem.

M.

Michael, I don't recall saying I don't beleive you. But there is a lack of scientific evedence to your case and I only have had 1 example that may have been taint from a stelvin.

I simply do not beleive the now 20% of the bottle are bad. I can beleive 3 out of 100. Thats about it.

I called it TCH just to see how snitty some of you would become. :-). I got my snitty reader out and it defined a few of you. :-) Could not be typing errors or the GSM...(giveashitmeter).

That said, I know cork is an issue and if it is it may not be whats causing

I never said that 20% of "all wines" were corked, only that it is close for the bottles that I open. This high figure may be due to my natural bad luck. I normally buy French and German whites while Dad drinks red. I don't recall opening a corked red before, are they less prone to this problem or is it harder to detect?

snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (kenneth mccoy) wrote in news:3928-43650E91-820 @storefull-3258.bay.webtv.net:

Well in MNSHO reds are as or more likely to be corked, but then I drink more red . . .

Salut/Hi Richard Neidich,

le/on Sun, 30 Oct 2005 14:47:57 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

With the greatest respect, Richard, reading this thread in one go, that's exactly what you DID say. Not in so many words, but by clear implication.

I would regard the opinion of a tasting panel of Grand Jurée members as quite scientific enough for me.

There, you've said it again. Michael is an eminent taster, whose opinion is sought throughout Europe. He has an opinion, but I am certain he will confirm that he has no financial axe to grind in so far as the debate between Stelvin and cork is concerned. So he tells you that the consensus of experts is that the figure is around 20%, and you say you don't believe it, then that is tantamount to saying you don't believe him. sorry, but you can't get around that.

If YOU don't think that you've tasted more than about one in 30 or so, there are two explanations, you could be one of the lucky people, like me, who isn't particularly sensitive to TCA (and deliberately using TCH is childish IMO) or you may have been very lucky. But that doesn't affect the truth of what Michael is saying. It's inconceivable that with this issue being such a hot potato, that he's mixed up his facts. So either he's lying or he's not.

No Dick, that's simply not logical. If you taste three bottles of the same wine and two are nbg and the third is fine, you can't put that down to anything other than cork. If the winery were contaminated, then ALL the wines made there would be. It happens - yes, but if you can put your finger on two examples only, how many hundreds of thousands of examples of TCA contaminated bottles occur each year that CAN'T be blamed on contaminated wineries?

I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. Stelvin HAS been tested over many years and has been shown to allow perfectly good aging. Furthermore, have you never looked at the neck of champagne bottles. They've got a rim like that of beer bottles, haven't they? That's because all vintage champagne including recently disgorged (usually after 25 years) is kept under crown caps while aging. No one's said the wines aren't aging properly.

But what proportion of wines are we talking about. 1%, 2%? If ALL other wines were sealed under Stelvin or crown caps, and if Stelvin were offered as an option for the rest, what would be the problem?

I really do think you should reconsider your position on this, Dick. With the best will in the world you're not being very logical.

"Ian Hoare" snip

Disagreeing on what is fact is not a matter of not beleiving...its simply a disagrement that there can be other factors.

And I will rely on the evidence of the USA and England that there are WMD's in IRAQ before the war effort.

True point...but these are whites NOT reds.

I don't have a problem if a winery wished to produce stelvin and or cork on same vintage. Thats what Plumpjack did. I liked the cork more.

As for my TCA vs TCH....thanks for being properly snitty.

Could it be that he is more sensitive by virtue of his experience, and would notice contamination that most people would not?

Is "corked" something that either is, or isn't, or is it something that is by degree?

Jose

No. Agreed, I might have more tasting experience than many others, but I am not especially sensitive to TCA.

Thus said, I have to repeat myself once again: Cork taint is *not* limited to discernible TCA. From Jamie Goode:

| Chloroanisoles other than TCA are also potential contaminants, | especially TeCA (2,3,4,6-tetrachoroanisole), which is detectable | in wine at concentrations of 10 ng/litre. A 2004 study by Pascal | Chatonnet and colleagues identified a further potential musty | contaminant, 2,4,6-tribromoanisole (TBA). This causes musty off | aromas in wine at concentrations of 4 ng/litre, and is formed | from its precursor TBP (tribromophenol). TBP is used as a | pesticide inside buildings; barrels, corks and plastics are all | susceptible to TBA contamination from the environment in | situations where TBP has been used. Old wooden structures are | especially susceptible. In support of this hypothesis, Chatonnet | cites the results from the analysis of wines carried out by the | Ontario Liquour Control Board (a monopoly state-owned supplier) | on wines it intends to list. In 2002, 2400 wines were tested. Of | those that were considered to have musty taint, only 49% had | significant levels of TCA (>2 ng/litre). The other 51% of | tainted bottles may have been affected by other chloroanisoles | or TBA.

And that's only one further taint source.

And then there is one taint from cork where I am unsure of the source, fruit scalping, and another most probably from too high oxigen permeability, fruit scalping.

The latter, of course!

But, I guess, the whole discussion turns around the definition of "cork tain". Standard and wide-spread definition - obviously what Richard has in his mind - cork taint is when a bottle shows dictinctive signs of TCA taint. You may be less sensitive, then you get a 3% rate, or more sensitive, then you are at 5-8%.

But then there is another phenomenon, well-know to anyone here, but not necessarily associated with cork tain: bottle variation. I guess it occurred to anyone here to open a wine he knows well and to find it slightly less good than the last time he had it. Some bottle variation is considered "normal" by many, while in fact, it is not. It's a cork taint problem.

When I speak from 20 to 30% taint rates, I speak from our panel tastings. Whenever one of the tasters - some much more sentive than I am myself - has the slightest suspicion that we might have an off bottle, the back-up bottle is opened. If there is a difference, than by definition the first had a cork taint.

Otoh, if you taste double blind and have no idea about what to expect, you never can detect a slightly off bottle. This is very similar to the conditions most regulars of this group - and practically every wine amateur - gets in contact with wine. You open a bottle, the wine is not obviously tainted, and that's it. You don't know whether a second bottle would taste better or not.

In controlled tasting conditions, with experienced tasters, the chance of a slight taint (we call them Korkschleicher, "cork creepers", in German) being detected is quite high. On the table of an amateur, the chance drops to near zero.

The highest taint level ever experienced was our Bordeaux 1995 tasting in January with a 30-40% taint rate. We tasted the wines blind in roughly ascending order in quality. Whenever anybody showed the slightest concern, we opend the back-up bottle. The farther we went through the tasting, even bottles showing "good" and even "very good" were asked to be retried, because they, in fact, should show "exceptional".

In a recent Bordeaux 2001/02 blind tasting, our panel scored Léoville Las Cases 2001 a straight 90. After declaration of identity, we opened the second bottle - and there it was, a clear

1. The first bottle was cork tainted by our definition. Served alone, nobody would have said anything, and I doubt it would have made it into the statistics anywhere.

M.

Ockham's razor, please. Cite one taint reason that's at least as probable as cork. And, no, winery taint is not accepted since by definition we talk about cork taint proven by a better back-up bottle.

It can.

Proof is here. You just don't want to acknowledge it. Try to read Tyson Stelzer's "Screwed for Good. The Case for Red Wines under Screwcaps". There is one chapter at

M.

No. You should reconsider your definition of cork taint, that's all.

See my other posting.

M.

I really just struggle with the amount of cork taint that is reported here. I do not struggle with the same numbers.

Is there a chance that it is in anyway country specific. Have studies been done that show taint by country of wine.

Perhaps the bad stuff they keep in Europe assuming most of the bottles sold there are cheaper anyway due to the client base demographics. :-)

Or a Brett issue. Brett has been shown to cause a considerable amount of bottle variation. I haven't seen much on why this is so, but there have been tests where the wines were tasted and then the wine was tested for the level of Brett cells. Bottle variation correlated with the number of Brett cells in the wine. This occured even from bottles that were from the same bottling run.

If the wine is sterile filtered before bottling, the living Brett cells are removed and the wines tend to show less bottle variation. I would love to see some figures on wineries use of Stelvin and their use of sterile filtering. My suspicion is wineries that are more likely to use Stelvin are also more likely to use other techniques (like sterile filtering) to avoid bottle variation and tainted wine.

Andy

Very interesting remark, thank you. Can't really comment on this fact since my tastings of screw-capped wines to 95% refer to stainless steel vinified whites where there is little chance of brett.

Hannes Hirsch, otoh, ages his top whites almost one year in large oak casks (not new), and he seems not to encounter brett - and bottle variation - problems.

I have had a few Austrian barrel aged reds under Vino-Lok glass stopper, but not enough to draw a valid conclusion. For the moment it looks as there are no bottle variation problems, but then the wines came from very quality conscious growers where brett would not be an issue, I suppose.

M.

Michael, Perhaps the crux of the debate here is a semantic one. The word "taint" implies a contamination (i.e., something foreign entering the wine), but we might instead call this broader issue "cork failure" since some amount of the bottle variation arises from leaky corks that permit the entry of oxygen (a well-documented problem). Of course, if one considers oxygen a foreign agent, then this is still a taint, so as I said we're back to semantics... ;-)

On a related note, some amount of fruit scalping is most certainly due to TCA or related haloanisoles: on several occasions (such as tasting with Ian and St. H. in NZ) I've detected TCA in a wine that others found flat and fruitless. Since I am a TCA-sensitive, I think that we can ascribe some percentage of fruit scalping to low-level TCA.

Such a high percentage is simply unforgivable, Michael. In other circumstances, one would have to question storage conditions, but in this case they are likely beyond reproach, leaving the cork as the main (only?) culprit.

Bring on the screwcaps! Mark Lipton

M.