Gee, if only there was a modern, scientifically engineered alternative to sticking pieces of tree in the bottle…
Anyone mention how did paraffin get in the corks to start with ?
I assume Cayuse uses a high quality solid cork or do they use a composite glued cork
I don’t see that aged Cayuse has anything to do with this intended but halted 2015 release.
I was wondering the same. And the email said they use the highest quality corks from the producer. Diam?
They use real corks
Wonder if there’s a practical way to pour it out, separate the paraffin and rebottle?
Once again, the cork industry screws over producers and wine lovers. They really are terrible, as is their product. I think the supplier should definitely be named. I realize this one situation isn’t because of the entire industry, but with all of their lies about consistency and irrational, sensationalist promotion of a sub-par product, this really bothers me.
I would think all of the wine could be opened, filtered, and rebottled. That would be very expensive and with somewhat questionable results, though, so I understand Cayuse going the insurance route.
While I totally get the inquisitive nature here, outing the cork company will only result in the time honored practice of going down the rabbit hole. Then people will want lists of producers who buy from them. Then they will want specific wines and vintages. Then the phantom perceptions of varying cork defect will start being posted. Wineries will be pilloried for their lack of transparency.
This is the way of the Internet.
My guess is that they will not do anything until they have settled insurance claim(s). After that I do hope that someone gets a shot at cleaning up the declassified wine. Should be possible with a scalable process. The only question is whether the paraffin is taking out flavor components. At least the base wine(s) might make for good blending components.
It also seems to me that the cork company would want to get out in front of this by identifying themselves and where in their process the mistake was made. Everyone ITB is going to find out anyways. I’m not so curious about what company had the issue but rather where in the process was there a QC problem and why did a customer have to notice it.
Clearly Cayuse needs to employ some more qualified cork-soakers.
Talked to a friend yesterday about this.His winery is around 15k cases per year and they run a test bottling for every batch of corks used.They send it to a lab for analysis before proceeding with bottling. Now they have there own bottling line so that may afford them the luxury of an hour or so delay. I don’t know if Cayuse has there own line.I am assuming with 4K cases that a mobile line comes there for bottling and for all I know Cayuse does the same testing procedure.
When you send corks out for testing, you are only usually looking for TCA. This situation does not sound common at all, though I have found oily slicks in wines in the past.
This must have been really bad, and not just from a superficial visual standpoint. I can’t imagine how much paraffin leaked into the wine, but it certainly must have been enough to concern them.
I would certainly love to hear more about exactly what happened and how it affected the wine, and I too am curious who else might have used these corks.
Cheers
Larry
I will confirm later, but I pretty sure they send the already bottled wine post corking.I was suprised to hear that.
Anyone mention how did paraffin get in the corks to start with ?
Someone who did more than stay at the holiday inn express can correct me (especially Don Cornwell)
re:the paraffin- I think most modern natural corks have paraffin or other food-grade coating. I believe this is for both sealing properties, but mostly as a lubricant for insertion into the bottle- as the uncompressed cork size is larger than the neck of the bottle, I think this is needed to avoid damage to the cork or even breaking the bottle neck?
http://www.jelinek.com/closures-stoppers/wine-corks/
https://oxidised-burgs.wikispaces.com/Corks
I don’t understand how paraffin - a very long-chain hydrocarbon (20-40 carbon atoms long) that is quite solid at room temperature - would make an oily film on a liquid at or below room temperature. Many wine’s corks are sealed with wax after all; granted it’s on the top or surrounding the very top of the bottle/capsule.
Must be a shorter hydrocarbon than paraffin that infused the bad batch of corks - mineral oil, vegetable oil . . . ? Or maybe they are using paraffin to mean kerosene which is sometimes the case?
That’s a good point, and I agree with you now that I’ve thought about it that way. I do hope other producers are able to find out who the supplier is, though. That was the reason I wanted the name to be made public, even though this really isn’t the place for that.
I’m not even on their list and this made my tummy hurt for them. What a thing.
It would be interesting to have someone experience the bottles and report the effect!
Agree.
It is not like the cork producer just found out about this issue when the press release went out. It has to be at least 2 months ago. Where have they been all this time?
How many wineries have purchased the same corks from Company X the last two months and bottled with them and only now will find out there was an issue? Corks come in bags of 2000 or so. It’s not like the problem would not have been isolated with just one bag that went to one winery. Cork production does not work that way.
The lack of transparency of the cork company in question will be a worse problem for them than the loss of Cayuse as a client. How do you not go public and reach out to clients over this? Even now, we do not know who they are. Which scares me.
The proper way to do this would have been for the cork company to…
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Find out who else bought corks that could have been contaminated from the batches which had this issue. And even those clients who didn’t buy that batch so they are not left scared to death.
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Offer every single client a FREE composite test of all wines bottled at a third party lab of their choice for every 2015 that was bottled. Paid for by the cork company, not the winery.
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Release their own apology and explanation the same day as Cayuse. They already know the cause. So where are they?
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Tell everyone (including non-clients) that they will be transparent about the cause and what they plan to do about it moving forward.
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Discuss how they plan to financially make those affected, whole. If possible. I hope they have insurance. If not, they will need a lawyer. Or law firm.
The fact they have done none of these things will be dreadful for them. Literally every hour that goes by is risking the company’s reputation more and more.
Hello all: I am a more than 18 year veteran of the cork industry and wanted to shed some light on a few comments/questions that are in this thread. Firstly, i would like to say this WAS NOT my company that supplied these corks and this situation is very unfortunate.
Paraffin - All corks are treated with Paraffin. The paraffin gets applied in large drums as the corks tumble under heat (the heat allows the cells of the cork to open up and allow for adhesion of the paraffin to the cork). A cork is like a sponge with thousands of little honeycomb like cells filled with air. if a cork does not have adequate paraffin it will just soak up the wine and become spongy. Therefore, suppliers apply paraffin to allow the cork to become hydrophobic. Paraffin can become sticky especially when cold so we use silicone on top of the paraffin to allow a smooth insertion and extraction from wine bottles. without silicone the corks are very hard to remove.
coating machines range in size from maximum 40,000 cork / cycle (the largest machines) down to machines that will only treat 3,000 at a time. if there really was an issue with the cork/coating it should be segregated to a particular coating cycle or day’s production rather than all the companies production.
Paraffin doesn’t just fall off the cork unless one of the following things happen -
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poor adhesion to the cork (not enough temperature during application, too much paraffin applied, inadequate tumble time). We have a whole host of tests we do to insure proper adhesion. i cannot speak for all suppliers.
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poor corker maintenance. A 24mm round cork is compressed to 15.5 in order to insert smoothly into an 18.5mm bottleneck. If your corkers is not adjusted properly it can be driving the cork into the bottle instead of smoothly inserting. if this is the case, you have a lot of debris that can be shaved off of the cork which is left in and around the jaws. The next cork picks up that debris on its bottom end as it is driven into the next bottle.
As written above, i just wanted to give some info on paraffin. my presence on this board is more of a reader than contributor hence lack of posts.
Best regards,
Dustin