Cameron,
Still plenty of folks using screwcaps, including the majority of Kiwis and Aussies.
There are certainly potential ‘issues’ with screwcaps as there are with any closures, but I don’t believe a huge number have moved away from it . . .
Cheers.
Purely anecdotal but its happening. Mass exodus, no. But definitely grumblings - mostly with regards to reds as folks weren’t as happy with how the wine matured (or didn’t actually)…I imagine there will be experimentation with the new OTR liners in the screwcaps. I recently attended the Aussie “trade entry” tasting for AUS wines without importers/distributors and had conversations with several folks who had switched back to cork or “technical” cork…I have been hearing about it for years now. Again, no tidal wave but the rumblings are there.
I have nothing against screw-caps, I’m just not there with them on oak aged whites just about any red. In fact, I was very interested in the new liners for OTR and was recruited to be a part of the trials but we’re too busy to participate. Too bad, very interested to know the result.
I do stand behind the statement, however, that screwcap integrity is definitely an issue. In last two years I have had several bottles of oxidized wine where the cap had been dinged and seal broken or not properly screwed on. We’ve had application issues ourselves on some Washington state white wines.
and of course as you know the cork is not the only potential source of tca. if the wine was infected elsewhere it could still be an explanation even if the cork was clean.
Jay,
You are correct - but in all honesty, the chance of a wine exhibiting TCA from stuff other than cork is so small that I’m amazed how often this is brought up.
Even with 'systemic’issues like Chateau Montelena in 2001, anyone who is less sensitive than James Laure does not pick it up . . .
Cheers.
Diam currently guarantees less than 0.5 ppt TCA [edit: <0.3 ppt, not 0.5], which is much lower than other guarantees I’ve seen. Other micro-agglomerated corks have had a <2.0 guarantee recently, 4 times higher. I have a very low threshold, and I’ve never had a corked bottle of wine with a Diam in it.
No, that’s not true, come to think of it. I had a wine last year showing classic ‘bad-technical-cork’ low TCA in every bottle; panicking (I have pushed my producers to use the closure) I called the winery, and they admitted that they’d had a tank of wine that got contaminated with low-level TCA.
I’ve had no problems and I am pretty sensitive to TCA. So far (after several hundred DIAM bottles), I’m a fan.
Eric, thanks for this; it is possible this is the problem. I will ask Patrice about it the next time we speak.
And just to clarify: The wine was NOT corked. It was simply dull, flat and lackluster.
Whenever I bring this up, several people say they haven’t smelled TCA (with DIAM in this case) so they know it isn’t there, which is not logical. An extremely low level that would not be recognizable to anyone, or almost anyone, could be present. I believe that could still impact the way the wine smells. It is impossible for the human olfactory sense to detect with certainty the complete absence of a compound. “[D]ull, flat, and lackluster” sounds exactly like wines I’ve tried that had TCA and plastic wrap was used to drastically reduce or eliminate the smell of the TCA itself. In one case, we had an unaffected bottle of the same wine for comparison, and while several people couldn’t smell TCA at all in the corked bottle, everyone agreed that it was not nearly as good as the sound bottle, probably using some of those same descriptors.
I switched to Diam last year with the 2013 vintage for a number of reasons. Issues with cork variability and/or poor cork density was the primary reason though.
I used one of the tighter O2 transfer rate Diam closures (Diam 10) for all of my single vineyard designates, and their tightest Diam (Diam 30) for the 2013 Heritage. I used the Diam 5 for the 2013 Willamette Valley.
All of them took considerably longer than natural cork to bounce back from bottle shock. They were thin, pale, and mostly similar to the description of of the Rion wine. While they are all continuing to put on weight and round into shape, I feel that the Diam closures are simply a slower evolution of the wine in comparison to cork. Especially the Diam designed for lower O2 transpiration.
2013 is a lighter vintage to begin with so I feel that this was more readily observable than in warmer years. The wine under the Diam 5 has come around reasonably well at this point, the wines under the Diam 10 are continuing to evolve towards what they should be, and the wine under Diam 30 continues to be a work in progress.
It may take a couple of years but I think most good winemakers will get a handle on matching their wines to the O2 rate the wines need. I have had no TCA issues under Diam, and no glue flavors.
I attended a DIAM sponsored industry talk/lunch a month or so ago, and this was the case with most of the winemakers at my table. The general feeling was that natural cork had made significant strides on TCA, but variability in OTR with natural cork remained a compelling reason to try DIAM.
Just opened up 3 Oregon pinots last night that had been coravined for over 2 months, there were probably 1/3 full each.
All three were rocking and no sign of degradation which I’ve had with alternate closures from using the coravin.
Wow, DIAM30? When I researched DIAM for my own wine, I couldn’t find any detailed marketing materials however winemakers here suggested DIAM5 was the closest to natural cork and DIAM10 would be putting the wine in stasis. I ended up bottling 2 cases under DIAM10 as an experiment, though that was only a year ago and I haven’t done a side by side yet.
In a 2009 blog post (linked at the bottom), Jamie Goode gave some typical OTRs for different closures (different OTR measuring methods give different numbers apparently…these are ‘MOCON’ numbers):
Typical OTRs in air (cc Oxygen/closure per day)
Screwcap, tin/saran liner 0.0001
Screwcap, saranex liner 0.001
Natural cork 0.0005
Synthetic cork 0.005
Jamie didn’t include Diam numbers, but Diam gives them:
Diam10 0.0004
Diam 5 0.0008 or 0.0019
I can’t find the OTR/MOCON for Diam30 unfortunately. Diam makes two different versions of Diam5, with different OTR levels. Only one of the Diam5s is brought into the U.S…I’m not sure which one tho.
Anyway, given this, Diam10 would be closer to the low side for natural cork than it would be for tin screw cap.
http://www.wineanorak.com/blog/2009/07/wine-closures-do-we-need-new-screwcap.html
DIAM 30s are designed to have the same OTR as the 10s. The difference is in the number of years they are supposed to remain structurally sound.
This is interesting, Doug, and is also a possibility. That said, it would have had to be an entire lot of DIAMs affected, as every bottle of this wine that I’ve tried has been identical.
If you are curious, send a bottle to ETS in Napa for testing. They’ll tell you whether there’s TCA or not.
Oliver,
Curious if you know what the cost is to do this? And are they running a GC/MS or something else?
Question for you and others - any chance that over time, after a wine has been opened, that the noticeable level in a cork will change as it dries out?
Also, wondering if they look at the entire cork or just at what touches the wine? If an ‘affected’ part of the cork is not in contact with the wine, would this still lead to TCA in a wine?
Cheers.
It is GC/MS test, the link below is the whole panel for wine, which you have to submit 125ml for. Its $140 for the whole panel I would imagine like there other tests you could just have TCA tested a la carte for much less. Turnaround is 2 days.
https://www.etslabs.com/analyses/%23TBCA
They can test corks as well. They soak them in basic white wine first then test the wine.
If you have any TCA questions, Eric Hervé at TCS is ‘Mr. TCA,’ very knowledgeable and in my experience also very helpful (particularly given that we’re a tiny customer compared to you winemaker types). The threshold of detection is the same as that guaranteed by Diam, 0.5 ppt.
My understanding is that agglomerated corks will typically be contaminated evenly and throughout a batch, because the contamination happens when bad chunks of cork get mixed in with the rest. That’s why I won’t accept wines closed with micro-agglomerated corks unless they’re Diam. I still remember the Altec disaster. Given that the contamination happened when the material was dry, I can’t see why ‘drying out’ would change, it.
I popped a bottle of Domaine du Traginer Collioure Rouge 2009 a couple of days ago that had the Diam5 closure. It had a very strong chemical aroma and flavor (although it could be argued that one is tasting what one is smelling) that rendered the wine undrinkable for us. I believe the domain had just released this wine, at least the wine had just recently been listed by the French merchant that I bought it from.
Any idea what might have been the cause for this flaw? Otherwise I cannot remember tasting a single faulty wine under Diam.