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TCA
- Thread starter Yixin
- Start date
originally posted by Steve Slatcher:
Anyone here tried using Half & Half to remove TCA from wine? It is supposed to be effective, but I am not sure how easy it is to separate from the wine afterwards in a domestic environment.
Steve,
I have no doubt that the butterfat in half and half would extract the TCA just fine, but half and half is miscible with wine, so I don't see how you'd easily separate them. You'd probably have to centrifuge the mixture.
Mark Lipton
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
I hate the resulting lactic notes.
Steve Slatcher
Steve Slatcher
That's what I was suspecting.originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Steve Slatcher:
Anyone here tried using Half & Half to remove TCA from wine? It is supposed to be effective, but I am not sure how easy it is to separate from the wine afterwards in a domestic environment.
Steve,
I have no doubt that the butterfat in half and half would extract the TCA just fine, but half and half is miscible with wine, so I don't see how you'd easily separate them. You'd probably have to centrifuge the mixture.
Mark Lipton
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:
Just drank a bottle of my best Prosecco that was slightly corked, under Diam.
This is the super fancy Diam?
No corked wines in September yet. I'm getting worried.
Joel Stewart
Joel Stewart
So glad that out of the thousand btls I've drunk, only one has been obviously corked. Many other bottles have had other flaws (such as my palate), but for all the corkage going on here, I must apologize for you folks taking up my share....and thank you, as well. May it always be thus.
Oliver McCrum
Oliver McCrum
originally posted by Yixin:
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:
Just drank a bottle of my best Prosecco that was slightly corked, under Diam.
This is the super fancy Diam?
No idea. With regular corks, spending more ensures only cosmetic improvements, AFAIK, no improvement in quality control. Diam may be different but I doubt it.
nigel groundwater
nigel groundwater
If it was DIAM [and certain Prosecco producers appear to be using it] it would presumably have been the DIAM Mytik [for sparkling wines] which is subject to the same super-critical CO2 and reconstruction process as all DIAM corks.originally posted by Yixin:
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:
Just drank a bottle of my best Prosecco that was slightly corked, under Diam.
This is the super fancy Diam?
No corked wines in September yet. I'm getting worried.
What is less clear is what 'slightly corked' means and whether the source of the taint was the DIAM. If it was, one should avail oneself of the guarantee but I have heard about as many corked screwcapped bottles as DIAM closed bottles i.e. very few indeed and none AFAIK have been confirmed by a laboratory test.
nigel groundwater
nigel groundwater
In a previous guise prior to a series of takeovers Oeneo-Bouchage [DIAM] used to be a major natural cork producer but now produce the DIAM natural-cork-based product and the SCap, the Oeneo screwcap.originally posted by Yixin:
I thought Diam manufactured both corks with and without discs - the latter being the Mytik, which is what I was referring to. Can't find anything on their website, so perhaps I recalled wrongly.
It follows logically that their marketing, along with the major screwcap and other alternative closure producers, would focus on the TCA history of natural cork and their ability to exclude that possibility.
Prior to their abandonment of the production of natural cork closures Oeneo-Bouchage or its predecessors may well have manufactured conventional Champagne corks with the 'rondelles' [discs] of natural cork at the bottom of an agglomerated cork closure. However AFAIK the Mytik has always been made completely of the DIAM material.
Oliver McCrum
Oliver McCrum
originally posted by nigel groundwater:
What is less clear is what 'slightly corked' means and whether the source of the taint was the DIAM. If it was, one should avail oneself of the guarantee but I have heard about as many corked screwcapped bottles as DIAM closed bottles i.e. very few indeed and none AFAIK have been confirmed by a laboratory test.
'Slightly corked' means I opened a bottle of Particella 68, a Prosecco I import, and it tasted slightly corked. I didn't have another bottle cold and it was slight so I poured it anyway, and after a moment my wife came up to me and whispered 'this is corked, isn't it?' My wife has a nose like a bloodhound.
Not scientific, you're right. On the other hand the rest of the bottles of the same cuvee didn't have the corked taste and the only variable is the cork.
Related topic, just had my very first apparent case of environmental TCA contamination. A new white wine came in, we tasted 6 bottles in a row that were all very corked; then we had 5 more analysed and they all ranged between 6 and 7 ppt TCA. The winery uses chlorinated TSP for cleaning, incredibly. A different bottling from the same producer was perfect.
nigel groundwater
nigel groundwater
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:
Not scientific, you're right. On the other hand the rest of the bottles of the same cuvee didn't have the corked taste and the only variable is the cork.
Related topic, just had my very first apparent case of environmental TCA contamination. A new white wine came in, we tasted 6 bottles in a row that were all very corked; then we had 5 more analysed and they all ranged between 6 and 7 ppt TCA. The winery uses chlorinated TSP for cleaning, incredibly. A different bottling from the same producer was perfect.
The only variable is the cork? A major variable certainly but the inside of the bottle is another one as is what went into the bottle - unless the entire cuvee was produced as a single homogeneous lot that was bottled from the same tank with the same connections throughout.
And when you say "the rest of the bottles of the same cuvee didn't have the corked taste" can I assume you mean from the bottles you have consumed rather than "the rest of the bottles of the [same] cuvee".
The bottles in a case have not necessarily been bottled in sequence which if they were would reduce the degrees of freedom.
And depending on the winery [some of the] DIAM closures might have been exposed on site.
Winery contaminations through barrels and the sort of situation you have described plus others that come from the water supply or wood treatments are not that rare and an industry exists to supply TCA detection devices to wineries and services to trace and remove TCA and other haloanisole contaminations.
It would also be interesting to know what sort of closure the 'corked' white wine was under?
Oliver McCrum
Oliver McCrum
On a theoretical level some of what you say makes sense. On a practical level, however, you are confusing me.
When a small number of bottles of wine from the same small L# smell like moldy basement Occam's razor tells us that the cork very likely is the problem. Problems with water supply or wood treatments would presumably be batch problems, not bottle problems. No idea what you mean by 'the inside of the bottle,' tiny TCA bandits flying around the winery infecting individual bottles or individual corks? 'Exposed on site' would be a batch problem, presumably.
Yes, I do mean 'the bottles I have tasted,' I haven't opened the whole batch.
The other wine was under bark cork. If the odds of even a very bad batch of cork these days is say 20 to 1 against it being corked, our more numerate readers could calculate for us the odds of 12 bottles in a row being TCA affected. Let alone 5 in a row at the same level, within 10%. The cork companies love to spread the idea that a significant number of the TCA problems we find out in the market are not caused by cork, I am fascinated to have finally found one (seemingly). Most of the time it's codswallop.
I have lost perhaps 1,000 cases of wine over the years to gross problems with cork*, that is to say problems that affect very large numbers of bottles all at once. God knows how many from 'normal' 2-5% loss, that never gets notices. It pisses me off.
*mostly Altec and a horrendous batch of expensive Champagne-type corks
When a small number of bottles of wine from the same small L# smell like moldy basement Occam's razor tells us that the cork very likely is the problem. Problems with water supply or wood treatments would presumably be batch problems, not bottle problems. No idea what you mean by 'the inside of the bottle,' tiny TCA bandits flying around the winery infecting individual bottles or individual corks? 'Exposed on site' would be a batch problem, presumably.
Yes, I do mean 'the bottles I have tasted,' I haven't opened the whole batch.
The other wine was under bark cork. If the odds of even a very bad batch of cork these days is say 20 to 1 against it being corked, our more numerate readers could calculate for us the odds of 12 bottles in a row being TCA affected. Let alone 5 in a row at the same level, within 10%. The cork companies love to spread the idea that a significant number of the TCA problems we find out in the market are not caused by cork, I am fascinated to have finally found one (seemingly). Most of the time it's codswallop.
I have lost perhaps 1,000 cases of wine over the years to gross problems with cork*, that is to say problems that affect very large numbers of bottles all at once. God knows how many from 'normal' 2-5% loss, that never gets notices. It pisses me off.
*mostly Altec and a horrendous batch of expensive Champagne-type corks
nigel groundwater
nigel groundwater
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:
On a theoretical level some of what you say makes sense. On a practical level, however, you are confusing me.
When a small number of bottles of wine from the same small L# smell like moldy basement Occam's razor tells us that the cork very likely is the problem. Problems with water supply or wood treatments would presumably be batch problems, not bottle problems. No idea what you mean by 'the inside of the bottle,' tiny TCA bandits flying around the winery infecting individual bottles or individual corks? 'Exposed on site' would be a batch problem, presumably.
Yes, I do mean 'the bottles I have tasted,' I haven't opened the whole batch.
The other wine was under bark cork. If the odds of even a very bad batch of cork these days is say 20 to 1 against it being corked, our more numerate readers could calculate for us the odds of 12 bottles in a row being TCA affected. Let alone 5 in a row at the same level, within 10%. The cork companies love to spread the idea that a significant number of the TCA problems we find out in the market are not caused by cork, I am fascinated to have finally found one (seemingly). Most of the time it's codswallop.
I have lost perhaps 1,000 cases of wine over the years to gross problems with cork*, that is to say problems that affect very large numbers of bottles all at once. God knows how many from 'normal' 2-5% loss, that never gets notices. It pisses me off.
*mostly Altec and a horrendous batch of expensive Champagne-type corks
No need for confusion surely.
As I said the closure is a variable to be considered BUT since you have now confirmed you have not tasted the entire cuvee you cannot say that your allegedly corked bottle was 'not part of a batch of affected bottles'. How big the batch could be would depend on the source of the TCA or other haloanisole [TeCA, TBA et al] assuming that it was TCA in the first place. Your Ockham’s razor reference requires rather more context than you are able to supply. Had the closure been natural cork, particularly from some years ago, it might have had some merit.
Such a batch would be made more or less likely depending on any lack of homogeneity in the production [lots, different vessels, whether any of them are wood etc] and/or bottling [numbers of hoses, different nozzles etc] of the cuvee.
By ‘inside the bottle’ I meant that there have been instances of unclean bottles [not necessarily TCA] which can occur without requiring that all or most are in that condition. Again you apparently cannot say whether your [allegedly] ‘slightly corked’ bottle was the only one in the cuvee [which, if it was, would change the likelihood of the closure being the cause] or whether there were significantly more which would increase the degrees of freedom.
As for your “tiny TCA bandits” you will know that haloanisole infections [particularly ‘slight’ ones] can be airborne to the wine’s surface or to wooden vessels although, as I say, the inside of a ‘dirty’ bottle would be more likely to be from a direct source and may not have been TCA.
As for ‘codswallop’ it seems unlikely that the detection and removal industry that exists would survive on that alone. I assume you are aware of the various systemic winery infections that have taken place worldwide including some of the most famous names and that there are now building guidelines that seek to exclude the likelihood of such infection. The fact that 4 out of 9 of the investigations of haloanisole-affected wine undertaken by the Australian Wine Research Institute several years ago were shown to have been winery infections is also relevant.
Getting ‘burned’ by Altec would explain your apparent overwhelming commitment to screwcaps but there really are a lot of haloanisoles around that have nothing to do with cork which is why they are found on vegetables, in many water supplies, in the wood chips in playgrounds and garden centres, on cardboard and wooden boxes and pallets and in cellars, particularly those where bleach has been used at some point to ‘cleanse’ the room.
Of course Altec was Oeneo’s predecessor to DIAM and was a disaster for the firm and which IIRC may have been part of the motivation that took Oeneo out of the natural cork business and fully into perfecting its super-critical CO2 Diamant process and DIAM production and into screwcaps too.
Oh and I wasn’t doubting that your white wine example was a systemic winery infection only that it would have been much more interesting had the closures been screwcaps or DIAM or Vinolok rather than natural cork. And the infection rate could have been variable and [much] less total depending on the location and transfer mechanism of the haloanisole within the winery and the way the wine was made and held. The relatively high levels in the wine suggest some sort of direct rather than airborne transfer.
Amazing as you say that the winery was still using a halogenated product but then maybe they thought it was codswallop too.