It's about time someone injected a little reality...
from the SF Chronicle Wine Letters:
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Critic Laube cautioned on the power of his palate
> Editor -- I read with interest Carol Emert's article, "Montelena
> joins the list of tainted wineries" (Uncorked, Sept. 9), in which
> she reports that Wine Spectator magazine senior editor James Laube > "outed a fourth winery whose cellar is tainted by TCA." The article > raises important, and troubling, issues.
TCA is a very serious problem. I don't know how there can various "acceptable levels" of TCA, as there are in Brettanomyces.
TCA is the death of wine. Either you've got TCA, or you don't. It's not a social disease we can "live with" and learn to accept, like herpes or Brettanomyces.
At a certain level of parts per BILLION, TCA kills wine. Period.
Nevertheless, there are infinitesimal threshold levels for TCA in wines which are simply unrealistic for most folks. Maybe James Laube, but most tastes can't recognise TCA below 4 parts per billion, for example.
I'm not referring to bad corks. I'm referring to musty cellars, which produce the mold in barrels which in turn produces the "dead" tones in wine.
WHAT---give up musty, humid caves as the origin of wine, and reduce all wineries to hospital, antiseptic, sanitation?
BILLIONS have been been invested by high-end wineries in Napa-Sonoma in recent years to drill wine tunnels into the landscape. The humidification of wine barrels, both above ground and below, is another multi-million dollar business.
TCA is the marriage of chlorine compounds (from chorinated water as well as winery sanitation) in the air and molds on the surface of wood, such as cork or cardboard or expensive French barrels.
The result is the production of tri-chloro-anisioles, of which there are several chemical "species".
All wineries are now throwing out their chlorine treatments, to avoid the chlorine molecule in the equation---and the mold in their cellars is growing, and TCA is still appearing.
Entire barrels are now subject to rigorous tests for TCA. It used to be corks, but now it's anything in proximity to wine which is made of wood---pallets, cardboard, barrels and even the roof trusses of a building.
It's become a biochemical witch hunt---and James Laube is the canary in the mine-shaft.
I think he is right in many ways, but he certainly has been extreme.
As a barrel salesman, I'm naturally concerned, having had some experience with TCA in barrels.
But I maintain that if the interior of the barrel is clean, the molds which cause TCA may be present in the cellar, but they will not penetrate the wood to infect the wine.
Wine is aged in a closed system of a barrel. If a barrel becomes contaminated on the outside, in a humid cellar, with TCA, it will not penetrate the 27 mm of stave thickness.
It then behooves a concientious winemaker to remove and transport the wine without contamination, like skimming milk off the curds.
This devolves to the traditional French practice of racking a wine from its lees, with as little fuss as possible. The lees are not the contaminants---the outside air and the pumps and hoses are.
Eliminating TCA will become the main sanitary problem in wineries of this decade.
For sanitation without chlorine, most wineries are employing ozone or peroxides or both.
And we must definitely have second thoughts about using natural corks at bottling, at least until a rapid lab test to detect TCA is made available.
Informative post, as always. Am I mistaken, but isn't TCA measured in parts per TRILLION?
I just checked WS's article on Montelena. They checked 7 Montelena Cabernet samples; five of them had levels of TCA ranging from 1.1 ppt to 1.7 ppt, and two had less than 1 ppt. Now, from what I've read, virtually every wine has some level of TCA present (usually less than 1 ppt, but seldom an absolute zero). The most commonly accepted notions of when it becomes perceptible for the majority of drinkers is something like 2.5 ppt? So the question is where does the line come where the output of an entire winery is declared "tainted"?
Apparently it's up to James Laube to decide, that's who. If I was Montelena, I'd consider suing. Laube is plain and simply acting irresponsible.
The most thought-provoking part of that article? Barrett [winemaker] admitted that it is likely that TCA was part of the winery's "house style" and that it was present in most of the wines at a low level. TCA "may have been one of the components of our wines dating back to the 1970s," he said, "especially when the wines weren't fruity."
Makes you think eh? Maybe sometimes that 'old world earthiness' often praised is just low-level TCA.
Despite all the postings regarding TCA since I started following AFW, there is a question (actually, two related ones) that just now occurs to me. Let me set the stage for it (them).
TCA has at least two effects on wine. It may have more but, for the moment, let's deal just with these two: (1) it imparts a musty (other descriptors are used but this one works for me) smell to a wine, which may then be perceived by other senses when the wine is poured into a glass and sipped. Other unpleasant sensory perceptions may then ensue. (2) it destroys (or at least diminishes) the fruitiness of the wine.
A couple of questions: (1) are these two effects related to each other? (2) does the chemical reaction that destroys the fruitiness of the wine consume (neutralize) the TCA? IOW, can a bottle of wine initially contaminated (in whatever manner) with a low level of TCA eventually reach a point where the fruitiness is destroyed or diminished but the TCA is consumed (eliminated, in whole or in part) by the reaction that caused the loss of fruitiness? If so, even the most sensitive of individuals couldn't detect the TCA by smell alone.
Despite the talk of "old world earthiness", "house style" and other, more palatable, euphemisms, I believe that TCA lacks any redeeming virtues when it comes to wine. Any attempt to depict it otherwise is marketing spin.
I also detect a perceived increase in the level of acidity, as well as a loss of the "fruit" characteristics, especially in whites and lighter reds. In bigger reds that have indicated to me, at least, that they were corked, the acidity doesn't seem so elevated. However, it could well be that with whites all three elements hit me right a way, and with bigger reds, I rely more on the other two, and then do NOT do a critical tasting of the suspect wine.
This, I cannot address. There is at least one chemist in the NG, maybe they can share their perspective. I've also been privey to several winemaker discussions on exactly what cork-taint is, i.e. bacterial interaction, a molecular interaction with cork/wine/natural acids, etc. Within these discussions, there has not been a concensus amongst the winemakers. Again, what is the agent at work? One observation, however, since moving to AZ, I've encountered many more instances of corked wine, than in Colorado. I suspect that the additional heat in wholesale shipping and storage might be part of the problem ("suspect" is very important here), or it could just be that there is more of it about, or that I've had bad luck with the higher percentage of bottles. I cannot answer that one.
I do agree that the elements that I attribute to TCA are in no way positive. My earlier comment on "Rutherford Dust" was a poor attempt at humor.
(2) does the chemical reaction that destroys the fruitiness of
I partially agree with the last point. But if the nose of a wine is completely dead, due to TCA, I would infer that the presence of TCA is quite apparent.
TCA does not have to manifest itself in "moldy cardboard" aromas. It can be "silent".
In other words, the absence of any fruity character *may* be an indicator of TCA. This becomes hard to prove, of course. But even "closed" wines have some aromatic promise of future development. A TCA-infected wine has none.
In answer to your point #2 (I don't fully understand question #1)--
TCA is not "consumed" in any reaction with wine components. TCA *masks* fruit; it doesn't destroy it!
And, this is the exciting point---wine fruitiness never really disappears after TCA infection, and can be RESTORED, at least partially, with some new treatments, just now being tried at some California wineries.
Of course, a tainted bottle can probably never be restored, because we are dealing with a small quantity of wine here.
But when, at a winery, a barrel or wine tank has TCA, some wineries have discovered ways to treat the wine by bringing the levels of TCA down to "threshold" limits.
So far, the most successful treatments involve ways to "adsorb" the TCA molecules onto other media, to separate them from the wine.
The two most successful items at the moment are polyethylene (polythene for you Brits). Certain plastics formulations have the ability to adsorb TCA. In bag-in-the box wines, this particular polymer of plastic may be already in use; I don't know.
But in the winery, if the wine were to come in contact with a particular type of polyethylene, such as sheets of plastic suspended into the tank, enough TCA can be removed by adsorption to bring the wine down to threshold levels.
Of course, for the wine itself there is little or no adulteration of quality, because the polyethylene is not an "additive" to the wine.
The other solution to this problem has been the addition of milk fat (*not milk protein*, also known as casein, which is a common fining agent for removing excess tannins).
The milk fat is not soluble in wine. It cannot be dissolved and become a part of the wine. Oils and fats, in fact, will float on the surface of wine if they are introduced.
But the milk fat will suck up TCA molecules like a sponge. The wine is later "racked off", and TCA contamination is thus removed.
That's the state of our development in solving the problem of TCA in larger quantities of wine.
It may sound low-tech, but believe me, there is a very sophisticated laboratory method in place to monitor this.
Thank you for the interesting information, that was *new* to me, at least. As one who is very sensitive to TCA in my wine, I've followed as many discussions on it, as I can, and can understand, not being a chemist. I appreciate your taking the time to offer these observations.
If, as you say below, the "destruction" of fruitiness is caused by a "masking" effect of TCA, as opposed to a chemical reaction, then I can understand why question #1 would not have made any sense to you.
I have never heard this before. I'm not disputing it. I just don't know.
Considering your posting as a whole, I don't follow your reasoning here. I don't know that I would ever try to "restore" a tainted bottle even if I could, but I don't see why size would enter into the picture. Or are you saying that it's just impractical?
[other comments interesting but snipped for brevity]
Impractical, yes and only. If you had the time, you could try these same experiments on a single glass of wine.
I have no idea how much "contact time" is required, but if you were to dip a piece of polyethylene plastic (such as a credit card, perhaps?), into a glass of a TCA-infected wine, you *might* restore it to "threshold levels".
That may be be difficult, boring and gauche at a fancy restaurant. If it were me, I'd send the bottle back!
But similar chemical tests can be performed easily in a wine glass.
On several occasions in fine restaurants, I have performed the "parlour trick" of dropping a copper penny (US currency) into a glass of wine which was suspected of hydrogen sulfide, "reduced", rotten egg aromas.
Some high-end, traditional California chardonnays, with their "sur-lie" regimen of stirring lees and leaving them in contact with the "poop" of fermentation for an extended time, and some California reds, such as syrah, with a natural tendency for chemical "reduction", benefit enormously from the addition of copper from a penny to the glass.
The effects on the nose are instantaneous! Copper strips everything down to clean fruit.
I wouldn't recommend drinking the wine after such an experiment (but I do!), because trace amounts of toxic copper may enter your body, and may, 30-40 years from now, cause a headache, or worse. I have to say this to avoid liability.
In the winery, the legal limit of copper addition to treat H2S (usually added as copper sulfate) is 1 part per million. That experimental dose in your glass may be many times more than that.
But it's a "cool" trick to mystify and amaze your friends.
As an aside, the addition of 1 ppm of copper in a commercial quantity of H2S-affected wine will produce a solid precipitate of cupric sulfide, which can be filtered off, in time, leaving a copper-treated wine with NO copper residues at bottling--as if the stuff were never added in the first place. In theory.
In commercial applications, this is only done rarely, and usually never. I'm talking last-ditch, extreme manipulation here.
But once in awhile, I taste a red wine with a pecular metallic "twang", and I know that it's been fooled with. This experience is mostly with cheap, jug wines---and not the classic wines you'll find at your dinner table.
Interesting posts, Bob. Thanks! What I can tell you about the polyethylene TCA extraction is that it will be quite slow, owing both to the slow rate of diffusion across a solid/liquid interface and the low surface-to-volume ratio of the wine. Ditto for the milk fat extraction. Best solution might be to rack the wine through low bore PE tubing, but then there are those who decry racking as "bruising" the wine so that may not be ideal. And your copper penny trick is cute and is certainly less harmful than using mercury or bleach in its stead ;-)
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