Rate of corked wines

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Blatant religious wars baits.
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nah, if I were from around here and not the old country, I'd call it lobbying
 
I'll bite.

My threshold was determined by noticing TCA in a batch of Altec-bottled Vermentino that was all at about 2 ppt. It might be lower, of course.

I notice you're not addressing my question about how they arrive at an 80% reduction, statistically.

Corks are way better than they used to be, everyone appears to agree. Are they good enough, though?
 
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:

Corks are way better than they used to be, everyone appears to agree. Are they good enough, though?
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Good enough for what, Oliver? They make good bulletin boards and trivets.

Mark Lipton
 
Just plopping back here for a moment, my original post was in large part inspired by the fact that I have been tasting through a large number of German wines recently and have not experienced any corked wines in quite a while. That said, the great majority of German producers whose wines I see these days bottle their less expensive wines with screw caps (and some bottle everything with screw caps). The wines left for cork closure, if any, are more expensive and indeed now receive high quality (in some cases, amazingly high quality) corks. This contrasts markedly with the way German wines were a generation ago or more -- short, crappy quality corks.

Italy still seems to be lagging a bit in quality of corks. At a couple of recent Italian tastings here (Slow Food and Tre Bicchieri), there remained some problems, even for expensive bottles.

France seems to be all over the place on corks quality. Perhaps it is just luck of the draw, but I do find the French going much more to DIAM than Germany (can't offhand recall ever seeing it for a German wine) or Italy (but I think you have some estates using DIAM, don't you, Oliver?).

Almost nobody seems to be using glass seals any more; too bad, from a visual aesthetic point of view.
 
Claude,

I have a number of producers using Diam, for wines that are meant to be consumed within a few years, and I've had excellent results with the closure.

When you say 'amazingly high quality' corks, are you referring to what they look like, or how they perform?
 
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:
Claude,

When you say 'amazingly high quality' corks, are you referring to what they look like, or how they perform?
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I don't have the time frame to tell you how they perform. The observation is just based on physical examination (and instruction that various producers have given me on what makes for quality in a cork).
 
I have heard a number of informed people say that Italian wines have more problems than, say, French wines. I can only say that most of the producers I deal with pay a lot for cork, they often deal with a number of suppliers in order to keep them all on their toes, and they still have more problems than they would like. One historical problem was that many old-line producers would trust their suppliers, and would not do quality control on the corks they received; this is much less true now. But Sergio Germano (Serralunga) told me recently that he has noticed that the first year's supply from any new cork supplier has a very low rate of problems, then they start to slide, which suggests that the suppliers have some idea of which batches are better and which are worse.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:
Claude,

When you say 'amazingly high quality' corks, are you referring to what they look like, or how they perform?
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I don't have the time frame to tell you how they perform. The observation is just based on physical examination (and instruction that various producers have given me on what makes for quality in a cork).
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The weird thing about cork is that you can pay a fortune for long, blemish-free corks, but I have never seen a price list that mentioned freedom from taint as a quality that you can pay for. So a producer could be paying 0.70 for beautiful corks but suffer from a very poor failure rate. David Schildknecht once noticed an extremely high failure rate for LGK and other rare German wines, apparently due to the different processing these very expensive corks received (I don't know if you agree with that observation, Claude).
 
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:
David Schildknecht once noticed an extremely high failure rate for LGK and other rare German wines, apparently due to the different processing these very expensive corks received (I don't know if you agree with that observation, Claude).
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I haven't seen anything David has written in a long time, but when eroticparker used to be open, he had several posts indicating that he is way, way out at the sensitive extreme for TCA. I haven't had experiences that would allow me to share his observation.

As an alternative to the special treatment for corks for LGK and other rare German wines, I would point out that they are low alcohol -- usually 5.5-7.0% -- and my understanding is that low alcohol wines are more susceptible to TCA problems.

Also, these special wines are largely bottled in 375ml bottles and the corks for those may differ from those used for 750ml bottles.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:

my understanding is that low alcohol wines are more susceptible to TCA problems.
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I can't imagine why that would be, Claude, unless somehow the smell of alcohol desensitizes your nose to TCA. If anything, higher alcohol wines should be more efficient at extracting the highly greasy TCA molecules out of the cork, but that is just my organic chemistry training speaking.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Cory Cartwright:
There's a winemaker around here who can tell you exactly why glass seals fell off the map. I'll leave it to him though.
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I have a German auction Spat, '04 Schloss Vollrads, that's under a glass stopper. I'd sure love to age it, but if these stoppers cause the wines to age prematurely like plastic corks, I sure as hell wanna know.

Is that an issue here?
 
If anything I imagine the problem would be the opposite, no oxygen transmission at all. I'd be curious if there's some known problem, though.
 
originally posted by Oliver McCrum:
I'll bite.

My threshold was determined by noticing TCA in a batch of Altec-bottled Vermentino that was all at about 2 ppt. It might be lower, of course.
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Vermentino, a white wine, which suggests your 'threshold' will be considerably higher for red wine based on panel performance in several studies.
Altec was of course the notorious predecessor of the successful DIAM range.
How and by whom was the “all at about 2 ppt” of the Vermentino determined?

I notice you're not addressing my question about how they arrive at an 80% reduction, statistically.
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I thought I had answered your question fairly in my last post. In case you missed it “you might take a look at the 2011 CQC report which shows how the 84% reduction has been measured and achieved based on the very extensive results of the US laboratories” - ETS and Scott. If you want to know more than the report spells out can I suggest you speak to the CQC.

The 80% from an earlier report was arrived at the same way - a like for like measure of TCA in ppt across all the large number of samples tested in each time frame. They say that their results also included samples from bales that were rejected for production processes i.e. the numbers would have been lower for those actually used - in both 2001 and 2010 which might have some effect on the precise percentage reduction [had the rejected outliers been excluded] but not on the fact that 94% had less than 1ppt and a further 4% had less than 2% in 2010 compared with the [corrected] number you gave for 2006 of 94% with less than 2ppt.
If you had looked further at the report for 2006 which you quoted I believe you would have seen that the percentage for less than 1ppt had been 76%.
2006 had already been a major improvement on 2001 and the next 4 years to 2010 showed a continuing improvement.
Unfortunately I cannot access a 2012 report which I assume would show the 2011 results but you can look at the others and satisfy yourself on the numbers.

Corks are way better than they used to be, everyone appears to agree. Are they good enough, though?
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Clearly not for you on principle or for those producers, possibly for more pragmatic reasons, who are switching to alternatives like the screwcap [most of Down Under though not all] and, progressively, DIAM - which is of course mainly natural cork [cleaned with super-critical CO2 and reconstituted with food-grade glue and synthetic microspheres] although it would be pretty illogical to describe it as such since it is now a major competitor to cork and being promoted on a similar basis [consistency with no TCA] to the screwcap.
Both the screwcap [specific non-tin liners] and DIAM [synthetic microspheres] also claim specific oxtrans performance emulating the best natural corks.

As you will know DIAM is the very improved version of the ill-fated Altec on which you base the quantification of your TCA threshold.

However natural cork remains the closure of choice for many great wines and still has the major market share e.g. Fourrier in Burgundy although others have switched mostly/entirely to alternatives e.g Ponsot [Ardeaseal entirely], Fevre [DIAM entirely], Laroche [Screwcap across the range although they maintain cork where the market demands it]

Let me just re-emphasise that my mention of these figures was to convey some quantified evidence that provides directional quantified support for Claude's and Yixin's observations and those in many threads in other forums. No comment about which seal is best [or worst] since I have all of them in my cellar and, like any wine drinker, hate a bottle spoiled by the non-performance of its closure, whether taint, production issues, natural defect or anything else.
 
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