Bottle Shock

Actually what you are tasting is not a result of bottle shock. The mustiness in wine comes from a contaminated cork which contains a chemical called TCA. TCA is what makes the wine taste musty. Bottle shock is referred to as a blandness in wine that occurs when the wine is first bottled.

C.G-A Winemaker C.G. Di Arie Vineyard & Winery

Can anything be done?

This was a brand new bag of corks. What should I have done to the corks before using them.

snipped-for-privacy@cgdiarie.com wrote:

So far I've opened two bottles that exhibit the problem. Should I assume the others will have the same problem? I haven't smelled it in the corks.

Toss the rest of the corks? Clean corker?

This was my first wine. Was tasting pretty good before I bottled.

snipped-for-privacy@cgdiarie.com wrote:

For my amateur wines I always rinsed the corks in several changes of warm water, until the water runs clear, before using them. I have had very few bad bottles over the course of 20+ years doing that. Also, the water softens the corks and lubricates them slightly so they insert more easily and conform to the neck of the bottle better.

Tom S

So far two out of 20 (some are 1.75).

Unfortunately, once the corks have the TCA, there is not much that can be done. Cork manufacturers are trying very hard to remove the TCA from the corks as a part of the process of manufacturing corks. 5-10% of all commercially used corks are tainted with TCA. If 2 bottles that you opened taste musty, it doesn't mean that all your wine will be musty. The only way to know that your cork has TCA before you use it is to send it to the lab for analysis of TCA.

CG-A C.G. Di Arie Vineyard & Winery

Sounds like a great idea for making corking the bottles easier - but is there any data to support the notion that this somehow removes or reduces the trichloranisole contamination? Anything I've read or experienced suggests that a tainted cork is a tainted cork - and there ain't anything you can do about it.

???

Lot of discussion on TCA above. It is rare but it does happen. If you have it, you have it. But give the wine 6 months to see if it clear up anyway. It might if it is something else.

Back to your question of bottle shock. It is hard to describe. You taste your wine when you bottle it and it tastes great. Then a week later a friend comes over and you want to brag so you open a bottle and it is just not as good as it was when you bottled. Then a couple of months later you try another bottle and it is good again. Best description I can give.

Ray

I'm tossing the corks I have and I'm going to let the wine sit for a while longer.

The bottle I sent to my sister for Christmas was good, so not all is lost.

Ray Calvert wrote:

Wine doesn't have to be bottled to do that. I observed similar effects in my barrels of Pinot Noir from week to week. As my friend Joanne put it, it would jump around like a Chihuahua!

I'm still not convinced that it was the wine, however, rather than my palate being "off". Still, that doesn't explain why I only noticed that with Pinot Noir - never Chardonnay or Cabernet.

Tom S

so why use cork?

this is the 21st century, not the 15th.

Ray Calvert wrote "Back to your question of bottle shock. It is hard to describe. You taste your wine when you bottle it and it tastes great. Then a week later a friend comes over and you want to brag so you open a bottle and it is just not as good as it was when you bottled. Then a couple of months later you try another bottle and it is good again. Best description I can give."

Ray that's the best description I've seen for Bottle Shock. I was doing some research about fining...trying to get rid of a nasty little bitter aftertaste in this years Baco/NY73 wine. I came across a good discussion about bottle shock in "Modern Winemaking by Philip Jackisch". Check it out. It has to do with air contact during the bottling step. With the small volumes home winemakers usually deal with it's probably more pronounced than with commecial wines where the winemakers have the ability to transfer wines and bottle without air contact.

Interestingly though I was at the largest local commercial winemaker here in the Kansas City area recently. They were bottling wine and I asked if their equipment purged air from the bottles before filling. Nope.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

One other question. Did you use Clorox as a sterilizing agent at any stage while cleaning equipment. TCA is often associated with chorine. Even the most minute (parts per billion) levels can cause it. A few years ago there was lots of wine lost by commercial and amateurs when cork makers used chlorine in one stage of cork making but supposedly they have stopped that. It is possible for the wine maker to introduce this problem by using chorine and it might not be coming from the corks at all.

Ray

Not knowingly. I used Straight A cleanser to clean the bottles and then kmeta to sterilize. Both of which shouldn't have had any chorine.

I didn't clean the corks (except for a little sterilizing with kmeta) or the corker. I did notice marks on the sides of some of the corks, which I presume is from the brass iris. Not impressions, but residue from the brass.

How should one clean a corker? I have the Italian floor model.

Ray Calvert wrote:

One reason - though not a wine-related one - is to help delay the extinction of the Iberian lynx.

The cork plantations are a significant part of their shrinking habitat. If cork becomes commercially non-viable, the habitat and the lynx will follow.

Just an example of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

Sam.