Saran Wrap and TCA Corked White Wine

Hi, Hunt -

Your method gives you so little contact time with the plastic that I'm surprised that it worked at all. I believe the recommended method is to immerse the sheet of plastic in the caraffe for as long as it appears to be necessary, which could be hours.

Tom S

Ah, so my little experiment is "tainted!" Hours, you say, what am I supposed to drink in the meantime - my private stach of Ch. Burbank?

OK, next time, I will thrust the wadded up Saran Wrap into the caraffe. I had made the assumption, that contact with the plastic would do the trick. I have to admit that the contact (however brief) did have an effect. Had I not had a control of both, the corked and uncorked bottle, I might have just deduced that Sullivan was working on a much lighter style of Napa Chard, and had hit on a bit of "truffle" in the wine. In this particular case, the wine went from unpleasent to barely OK. One problem with this wine, however, is that I recall very, very well, the older Napa Rutherford Chard, from their little vineyard at the tasting room - I loved that wine. Since they have re-planted that plot, and now source their Chard grapes (juice?), it has been less than the " Montrachet" style, to which I had become accustomed. Oh well, times change.

Hunt

PS I am doing TN's on the Ch. B'bank, and am on my second bottle - I like it!

Whew! Had me worried there. The silence was deafening. ;^)

Tom S

Er, Tom, mine are aging gracefully in my cellar, I promise to gently crack them open this winter with good french company...

gosh these winemakers are SOOOO sensitive... ;-)))

2 days has often been mentioned, thought I have noticed beneficial effects after 1 day. I fancy I also detect a slight chemical taste after the process, but most people seem not to - still better than TCA.

I presume Saran Wrap is Polythene...? Again, that is the plastic that is usually mentioned in for this purpose - Tesco sandwich bags for UK readers! To translate Saran Wrap as cling film is dangerous, as cling film can be made using PVC, and PVC and/or the plasticisers in PVC clingfilm give wine a disgusting taste - I tried it :(

So.... DO NOT PUT PVC BASED CLINGFILM IN WINE.

Only the good ones, it should be noted. :)

I _almost_ had an opportunity to open another a few weekends ago, but the food match wasn't right, so I decided to wait. For the record my note is below. I'll be interested to see what Hunt and Mike think!

-E

Ch. Burbank '01

"Beautiful deep gold color with a fat and generous nose of caramel and grapefruit. In the mouth very chewy, burnt caramel, acacia honey, pineapple, vanilla and melons, a nice finish veering towards bitter orange rind. Big and bold but well balanced -- not too fruit forward -- and with (I thought) well integrated oak, a lovely example of a CA chardonnay in the "traditional CA" style. "

Yes, prolonged contact is important. Despite my having tasted an off "chemical" flavor the last time I did this, my usual experience is that it removes the TCA and also some of the character of the wine, leaving something slightly muted but not overtly off. Experiments are still ongoing, though ;-)

Steve, We went down this road already in a reply to John Taverner a few days ago. Yes, it's _polythene_ cling wrap, which on this side of the pond is now the only type you can find (PVDC was the original polymer used in Saran) these days in the US.

PVDC != PVC, but otherewise I agree 100%

Mark Lipton

Mark Lipton wrote in news:UmJff.343463$084.50723 @attbi_s22:

I have tried it and found that the wine was still less than desirable, but drinkable. The best recourse is to take the bottle back but sometimes one knows not where the bottle belongs and cling wrap is slightly better than pouring wine down the sink.

I missed that (and, in fact. looking back, I still cannot find it).

I think the IK must be one of the few places you can still get PVC clingfilm!

My clingfilm was definitely PVC. Presumably they use the same nasty plasticisers in PVDC...?

I meant "UK" of course, not "IK"

Thanks for the kind words, Emery. You guys write wine reviews a LOT better than I do!

BTW, that is the same wine I shared with Dale, Betsy and (???) in Laguna Beach last Winter. Ian has some too, and I recommend that he try one over the holidays.

Tom S

Thanks for that info, Steve. I looked at the label on Glad Wrap and it's polyethylene, so that'll work too.

Tom S

Are we talking about really removing TCA as opposed to masking its effect?

Has anyone quantitatively measured the concentration of TCA before and after immersion of the plastic, perhaps also checking for time of exposure and amount of plastic needed?

I don't doubt the physical possibility that the PVC/Saran treatment may work, just wondering whether anyone has gone beyond noses and tongues to test its effectiveness with more precise instruments.

Until then, I remain a skeptic: show me the data!

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Removal, yes. Masking, no.

None of us here, I'm sure! To conduct such measurements on a substance that occurs in the range of only a few parts per trillion requires some pretty fancy lab equipment. Mark could probably speak to this.

For one thing, it's not PVC (polyvinyl chloride). It's polyethylene, or polythene to you Brits. ;^)

Sounds good theoretically, as it's based on the distribution coefficient between (essentially) water and what amounts to a solid, organic solvent (polyethylene).

Try it yourself! I will the next time I get a corked bottle.

Tom S

Agreed. I find the smell of TCA disagreeable enough, even in minute amounts, that masking it effectively would be a neat trick.

Yes, you'd have to have a low detection limit, but labs do exist that can do it. Laube submitted all of his "faulty" CalCabs for lab analysis to prove that they did have 1 ppt TCA in them ;-) I imagine that the GCs they use would have to use electron capture detection, which works very well for molecules like TCA. Still, the nose is as effective a detection instrument for TCA as a GC in most instances.

Mark Lipton (Just glad that he doesn't have to taste each and every molecule he makes as they did 100 years ago)

Yup

I have no hard data, but I believe there is good scientific evidence of volatile substances being adsorbed by polythene, inlcuding unfortunately some that one might prefer to stay in the wine.

It is not in the same league as waving magnets over your wine, or whatever.