Rate of corked wines

originally posted by mark e:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by richard slicker:
i have had 6 bottles of corked screw cap wine
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OTOH, my last 6 bottles of screw capped cork wine were by definition problem free.
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The bored WD board members will forgive, one hopes, bringing up the ol' canard about screw caps: reduction.
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Fo' the record, and with no desire to take sides in the new papal election, screw caps don't cause reduction. Reduced wines were bottled in a reduced state, and a crappy plastic cork will resolve the problem in no time (a "good" cork in yes time). Screw caps merely maintain the oxygen deficit of reduced wines intact. Not a distinction without a difference.
 
I agree with Oswaldo - a person who goes mad after being locked up in a cell without a window for a year clearly had genetic predisposition to madness.

or does this mean I agree with SFJoe?
 
originally posted by mark e:

Screw caps are not *by definition* problem free. Though the wine is TCA-free, there have been issues with mercaptans and other off-odors in the not-too-recent past.
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nope. i have had two wines recently that were tca ruined under screwcap. the fact that every bottle i've tried was the same merely confirms that they were fucked prior to bottling.

turns out that there are lots of ways that shit can end up in finished wines. bad barrels, chlorinated water left lying about... bad corks are a common way for those nasty haloanisoles to end up in your glass, but they are far from the only way.

fb.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by richard slicker:
i have had 6 bottles of corked screw cap wine
Click to expand...

OTOH, my last 6 bottles of screw capped cork wine were by definition problem free.
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if i say that something touched my heart, is your first thought, "i hope its hands were clean!"

similarly, if i say i had some corked wine, what's the first thing that comes to mind? that i finally moved up from my habitual jugs of gallo?

fb.
 
originally posted by .sasha:
I agree with Oswaldo - a person who goes mad after being locked up in a cell without a window for a year clearly had genetic predisposition to madness.

or does this mean I agree with SFJoe?
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To agree with me you'd have to think that a person who goes into a windowless cell already mad would continue to be after a year, but might improve if the cell had a window.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by .sasha:
I agree with Oswaldo - a person who goes mad after being locked up in a cell without a window for a year clearly had genetic predisposition to madness.

or does this mean I agree with SFJoe?
Click to expand...

To agree with me you'd have to think that a person who goes into a windowless cell already mad would continue to be after a year, but might improve if the cell had a window.
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Especially if care were taken to the landscaping outside the window.

At least that was Henri Labrouste's thought in designing a cantonal asylum for the insane in Lausanne.

(Cela dit, I agree with Monsieur Dot, in this occurrence.)
 
originally posted by richard slicker: i have had two wines recently that were tca ruined under screwcap. the fact that every bottle i've tried was the same merely confirms that they were fucked prior to bottling.

bad corks are a common way for those nasty haloanisoles to end up in your glass, but they are far from the only way.
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Richard, Then does this not call into question the very notion up to now that most (all?) of the blame for TCA is due to corks?

. . . . . . . Pete
 
originally posted by richard slicker:
originally posted by mark e:

Screw caps are not *by definition* problem free. Though the wine is TCA-free, there have been issues with mercaptans and other off-odors in the not-too-recent past.
Click to expand...

nope. i have had two wines recently that were tca ruined under screwcap. the fact that every bottle i've tried was the same merely confirms that they were fucked prior to bottling.

turns out that there are lots of ways that shit can end up in finished wines. bad barrels, chlorinated water left lying about... bad corks are a common way for those nasty haloanisoles to end up in your glass, but they are far from the only way.

fb.
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Hell yes. There's a whole industry making part of its living by removing haloanisoles from wineries and food plants and if corks had been used instead of screwcaps in those two wines they would have ended up carrying the can for the TCA contamination.

Of course if the winery [barrels, pallets, hoses, wooden structures, insulation, water supply] is at fault [enormously less common than the cork although with the improvements underway all things eventually approach the omega point] even screwcaps with a saranex [one of the best TCA attracting materials known - moonlights as original Saran Wrap] liner can become tainted in their vicinity. As indeed can any closure made with plastic or cork materials as well as any accessible wine since haloanisoles manage airborne transfers very effectively.

IIRC the AWRI's 2008 technical report commented that of the 9 haloanisole faults they investigated that year 4 of them were winery related.
 
originally posted by nigel groundwater:
originally posted by richard slicker:
originally posted by mark e:

Screw caps are not *by definition* problem free. Though the wine is TCA-free, there have been issues with mercaptans and other off-odors in the not-too-recent past.
Click to expand...

nope. i have had two wines recently that were tca ruined under screwcap. the fact that every bottle i've tried was the same merely confirms that they were fucked prior to bottling.

turns out that there are lots of ways that shit can end up in finished wines. bad barrels, chlorinated water left lying about... bad corks are a common way for those nasty haloanisoles to end up in your glass, but they are far from the only way.

fb.
Click to expand...
Hell yes. There's a whole industry making part of its living by removing haloanisoles from wineries and food plants and if corks had been used instead of screwcaps in those two wines they would have ended up carrying the can for the TCA contamination.

Of course if the winery [barrels, pallets, hoses, wooden structures, insulation, water supply] is at fault [enormously less common than the cork although with the improvements underway all things eventually approach the omega point] even screwcaps with a saranex [one of the best TCA attracting materials known - moonlights as original Saran Wrap] liner can become tainted in their vicinity. As indeed can any closure made with plastic or cork materials as well as any accessible wine since haloanisoles manage airborne transfers very effectively.

IIRC the AWRI's 2008 technical report commented that of the 9 haloanisole faults they investigated that year 4 of them were winery related.
Click to expand...

Precisely.
 
originally posted by Chris Coad:
originally posted by nigel groundwater:
originally posted by richard slicker:
originally posted by mark e:

Screw caps are not *by definition* problem free. Though the wine is TCA-free, there have been issues with mercaptans and other off-odors in the not-too-recent past.
Click to expand...

nope. i have had two wines recently that were tca ruined under screwcap. the fact that every bottle i've tried was the same merely confirms that they were fucked prior to bottling.

turns out that there are lots of ways that shit can end up in finished wines. bad barrels, chlorinated water left lying about... bad corks are a common way for those nasty haloanisoles to end up in your glass, but they are far from the only way.

fb.
Click to expand...
Hell yes. There's a whole industry making part of its living by removing haloanisoles from wineries and food plants and if corks had been used instead of screwcaps in those two wines they would have ended up carrying the can for the TCA contamination.

Of course if the winery [barrels, pallets, hoses, wooden structures, insulation, water supply] is at fault [enormously less common than the cork although with the improvements underway all things eventually approach the omega point] even screwcaps with a saranex [one of the best TCA attracting materials known - moonlights as original Saran Wrap] liner can become tainted in their vicinity. As indeed can any closure made with plastic or cork materials as well as any accessible wine since haloanisoles manage airborne transfers very effectively.

IIRC the AWRI's 2008 technical report commented that of the 9 haloanisole faults they investigated that year 4 of them were winery related.
Click to expand...

Precisely.
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Thank you
 
originally posted by richard slicker:
originally posted by mark e:

Screw caps are not *by definition* problem free. Though the wine is TCA-free, there have been issues with mercaptans and other off-odors in the not-too-recent past.
Click to expand...

nope. i have had two wines recently that were tca ruined under screwcap. the fact that every bottle i've tried was the same merely confirms that they were fucked prior to bottling.

turns out that there are lots of ways that shit can end up in finished wines. bad barrels, chlorinated water left lying about... bad corks are a common way for those nasty haloanisoles to end up in your glass, but they are far from the only way.

fb.
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True, but just to be clear, it's overwhelmingly cork that causes the problem. I import more than a hundred different wines every year, and have for almost 20 years, and only just had my first 'environmentally corked' wine. (They were using TSP with bleach as a cleaning agent, then some TCA-contaminated water somehow made its way into the bottling machine.) There will be other examples but one imagines that most of them don't reach the consumer, as all of the affected lot would be bad.
 
I seem to recall that a big Barolo producer in the late 1990s had to tear apart and rebuild his cellar because of environmental TCA. Was it Einaudi?
 
originally posted by kirk wallace:
well, there was this Altare, but i don't recall his or his daughters' having to rebuild the winery.
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That's because it wasn't environmental, according to the article, but instead a batch of bad corks. Same thing happened to Clape at roughly the same time for the Renaissance Cornas.
 
That's my recollection too, Claude.

Jeff, I don't remember any Barolo cellar with that problem, but who knows. At least one producer I know used to use bleach to clean the cellar, though...
 
What I thought I recalled was that a Barolo maker built a fancy new winery and, before its inaugural vintage, they found TCA in the varnishes (or something) that had been used to paint or seal all the wood. Everything had to be torn out and redone.

But I will defer to the aggregate memory. I must have conflated Altare's cork batch problem with something else.
 
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