Corked!

Late last year I took delivery of several mixed cases from a well known west coast supplier. These were the first wines I’d received from them. I contacted the supplier this week after two (different) wines in close succession had been cork-tainted. I received an email back pointing out how “extraordinarily rare” this would have been given TCA taint “only affects roughly 1% of bottles”. Nonetheless they were generous enough to replace the bottles.

Looking back over my notes for the past year I have opened 225 bottles of wine and have experienced 5 that were distinctively cork tainted. Perhaps I’m a little unlucky, although there seem to be plenty of articles that suggest otherwise.

What are other peoples’ averages?

Were these current releases?

I ask because TCA taint used to be in the 8-12% range, but the rate is far, far lower in the last 10-12 years. I host regular tasting groups, and it’s pretty rare now that we have a corked current-release wine. We used to average one in every tasting of eight wines.

Also, there are very large variations in individual sensitivity. Berserker Oliver McCrum told me he had himself tested and can detect it at around 50 parts per trillion, but the average is 300 ppt. Maybe you’re particularly sensitive.

There are also pretty substantial regional differences. I think Italy and France (in that order) have higher percentages of corked bottles than I get from the US, in my experience. In my personal experience over the years, I’d say the corked rate for Italian wines is probably 3x or more the rate for American wines.

I’d say your rate is probably about average or maybe a touch high if you were drinking all American wines, but low if you were drinking all Italian wines.

I opened a bottle the other day that was corked, which had me thinking about exactly this. I don’t keep track, but in general, my rate has been incredibly low in recent years—maybe on the order of 1%-2% if I had to guess. But I‘m no super taster, so take it fwiw.

I guess my experience is different from yours, John. I have never seen anyone claim an 8-12% TCA taint, even in the old days. My experience was 3-5% back then, less now for current releases. Regarding sensitivity, yes it varies dramatically, but some can detect at the 2-3 parts per trillion, I personally am at 4-5 PPT. 50 PPT would be relatively insensitive, and 300 PPT is extremely insensitive.

To the OP, 5 out of 225 corked is well within reason for natural cork finished bottles, especially if you are drinking wines from other than current releases. For recent DIAM, and certainly for screwcapped wines, that would be high. Also, while the odds of two consecutive random bottles being corked is fairly high, it isn’t that uncommon to have, once a first bottle is deemed corked, that the next bottle is also corked. Mathematically, it would happen at whatever the odds of any single bottle being corked, so if you think TCA is in 2% of bottles, then 2% of the time after you encounter a corked bottle, the next one would be corked as well.

Both 2016. One was a Columbia Valley Rhone blend, the other a St. Emilion. Interestingly perhaps it was the Washington wine that was quite undrinkable, the Bordeaux was tainted but with other flavors coming through.

Are they getting corks from different places for California wines than for French and Italian wines?

Agree with John, sensitivity can vary widely among individuals. Been tasting with a group that includes several winemakers. One has acuity to detecting TCA that is incredible. When there is any doubt about tainted wine the group says “Let Mikey (not his real name) taste it. In this age of great GC MS analytical tools an ultra sensitive taster is still the gold standard for detection.

Tom

I may have the scale wrong for the detection threshold, but the threshold for detection in reds is evidently many times higher than for whites – 50 ppt in reds versus 4-10 ppt, according to this research paper. In any event, as I recall, Oliver said he was about 6x more sensitive than average – a somewhat mixed blessing.

A decade or 15 years ago, estimated taint rates of 8-12% were pretty common and, as I said, that squared with my groups’ experiences in the 90s and early 2000s.

Even in the mid- and late 2000s, when the industry began to address the problem, surveys yielded taint figures in the high single digits. Based on large tasting series, the Wine Spectator detected it in 7% of wines (2005) and 9.5% (2007). Australian Wine Research Institute measured 6.5% in 2003 tests, but that was down from higher levels a few years earlier.

Anecdotally, I think it had improved by the mid- and late-2000s, when most of those tests were done. So I think 8-12% is a reasonable estimate before the mid-2000s.

I think it all comes from Portugal and Spain. There may be different levels of testing by the cork makers, though. Greg Tatar would know the answer (as he always does).

That makes sense, because there are two consequences of the taint. First, it has it’s own smell. Second, it can interfere with other aromas. That’s why you sometimes find a wine that’s strangely muted but which doesn’t show the characteristic wet cardboard scent. That may be a case where the TCA is below your detection threshold, but it’s messing with other elements of the wine. Because there are so many compounds in wines, even two wines with similar levels of TCA smell may be affected quite differently – one just wreaks of TCA and has no other scents and the other with perceptible, pleasurable aromas behind the TCA.

The other variable in this is that some people are really repelled by the smell of TCA while others (like me) aren’t. If you find it noxious, then you’ll probably hate a wine even if there are other aromas there. If you’re like me, sometimes you can draw pleasure from a wine despite obvious TCA if other nice things show through.

8% sounds about right in our retrospective tastings. Much lower with recent wine vintages. Uncommon in much older wines, too. Some attribute that crisis in quality to ever increasing demand stressing the production, as in shortcuts in quality control in the face of high demand. Then came the backlash and the threat of phasing out cork altogether.

The only corked wine I had last year was from France (Gigondas).

I read that they’ve moved away in recent years from the use of chlorine products to sterilize the corks, and I have a VERY DIM recollection that the introduction of chlorine may have been one of the problems – it reacted with molds in corks, or some such. But don’t quote me!

Interesting. I have never noted a difference in taint rates in reds v. whites. I have experienced both in roughly equal amounts. While my own cellar is predominately old world reds, within my tasting circles it works out to pretty close to 50/50 red v. white.

8% sounds about right in our retrospective tastings. Much lower with recent wine vintages. Uncommon in much older wines, too. Some attribute that crisis in quality to ever increasing demand stressing the production, as in shortcuts in quality control in the face of high demand. Then came the backlash and the threat of phasing out cork altogether.

I agree with the 8% about 10 years ago. I would always have to open wines to check for big tastings and that was about what I was getting.

Today I am seeing many different closures so that % is down. I personally like Screw Caps the best. The average consumer is coming around on the fact that this does not equal cheap wine.

This is stated damn near perfectly.

In our early days in this hobby, the owner of a LWS let us smell a vile of liquid contaminated by TCA. Awful, but the impression of wet cardboard was a lasting one- burned in to our memory. He then presented us a bottle as John describes above in scenario #2, tainted yes, but not to the point one perceives the signature cardboard note. It was a then current release bottle of Seghesio Sonoma County zin. You know damn well there’s supposed to be fruit, but there simply wasn’t. No other obvious or perceptible issue/flaw, simply an absence of fruit. In some cases, you may be able to smell the TCA but not taste it, and others, not smell it but taste it on the palate.

My wife is one of the two most TCA-sensitive tasters in our local group, and on very rare occasions, perhaps two or three times thus far, I am able to enjoy a bottle that she would rather send down the drain.

People in the trade – importers and distributors who taste their own wines often – often can tell right away when they have one of those bottles muted by TCA where the aroma isn’t detectable because they know what the wine should taste like.

I am super sensitive to TCA and find fewer tainted bottles each year.
(Or maybe I am becoming senile)

More likely, cork taint is harder to perceive in huge, powerful, high alcohol wines than in more elegant and subtle wines.