I just read a winefolly post on wine flaws.
When discussing TCA it said the original formulation of Saran Wrap had a compound - PVDC - which binds to and removes TCA.
It also said the current formula for Saran Wrap has no PVDC and as such does not work for fixing TCA.
I have read here many times about the Saran Wrap fix but this is the
first I have heard about the ineffectiveness of the modern formula.
If this has been posted here elsewhere, my apologies for the repeat.
Multiple times, for example here’s one post from last December: Can a corked wine still be used in a marinade? - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers
At least here in the EU the product boxes tell from which material the wrap is made of, so it’s easy to pick one made from 100% polyethylene.
Some sources say the wrap needs to be polyethylene, whereas other sources say it must be polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene doesn’t work. However, I’ve noticed that 100% polyethylene wrap works just fine.
You’re not really copping to doing this are you? Big loss of credibility!
It doesn’t matter. While the Saran Wrap removing TCA was a fun parlor trick, the resulting wine was of essentially no interest to a wine enthusiast type, so it had no real importance.
I guess to someone who drinks $4 bottles of wine (which is what your good wine post Saran Wrap would taste like), it might be of some value, though those folks probably don’t know or care if their bottle is corked in the first place.
agree with chris. TCA is a fatal flaw
Why?
Definitely this. TCA basically kills the fruit, so even though you might end up with something drinkable by removing the TCA, you won’t end up with the original wine, because it’s lacking so badly in fruit.
However, while corked wine is something I’d never use in cooking, one can turn a corked wine into a perfectly decent cooking wine by removing the TCA with plastic wrap.
A propos, a friend of mine claimed that TCA gets cooked away with heat so one could always use a corked wine in cooking. I thought this didn’t make sense, because I remember TCA having a higher boiling temperature than water, so once I got him a very badly corked wine and told him to make a red wine reduction sauce from it. The sauce wasn’t particularly bad, because it didn’t smell corked at all and all the salt and spices took away most of the TCA flavor, but there was still a faint but nevertheless a rather obvious note of mildew in the taste. So instead of convincing me that corked wine could be used in cooking, this managed to convince me never to use them in cooking - not that I had done it before, mind you.
I doubt if this is helpful to Otto, but the Whole Foods brand of wrap is PE and that works. My problem with this technique is that the PE also removes the other flavors as well.
Wow that would explain why, when I tried to salvage a semi recent corked gran reserva, the ‘saran wrap trick’ didn’t work.
I do get that the flavors will still be muted after the intervention, but sometimes, if one has saved a bottle for a long time, and its the only one, accommodations have to made.