Hi,

This is the article I promised Dick I'd write. In passing, I'll try to
address some of the inconsistencies of experience between those who taste
regularly ad professionally, claiming corked wines amount to 5 to 15% of the
total, and those of us who have our collections of old bottles and find
nothing like that proportion.

1. Many of us are pretty insensitive to TCA pollution or rather fail to
recognise it as such, and therefore don't recognise a wine IS corked when it
is.

Having said that many of us don't recognise TCA, I think we have all
experienced bottles where the wine simply doesn't "show" as well as we
expected it to. I guess (pure speculation on my part, but I would submit
from my own experience that it is probably valid) that in many cases, this
is due to TCA in quantities below _our_ capacity to recognise it. Someone
more sensitive might well. This has certainly happened once, in a tasting
with Mark and Andrew in New Zealand. I also DID detect it on a heavily
corked bottle that had Mark rearing away in disgust. Subsequently I detected
it during a blind tasting (of corks vs other closures) in Bordeaux. This
personal experience makes me suspect that I am not as totally insensitive as
I'd thought I was. The corrolary of that, of course, is that I must have
VERY rarely been exposed to TCA previously in [detectable-by-me] quantities.

2. TCA pollution has grown in proportion in recent years. 30 to 40 years
ago, it certainly existed, but was very rare.

This will explain to some extent why those of us who mainly drink fully
mature long aged wines will have experienced many fewer cases of corked
wines than professionals such as Michael Pronay, and others here. These
wines haven't yet passed into our "drinking now" category.

Furthermore, I've seen winery owners claim that by being ultra fussy about
where they buy their corks from, they have very few - if any - cases of
corked wines. I take these claims with a pretty large pinch of salt, but I
think it would be a mistake to reject such evidence out of hand. Why?

Corks are sold under a plethora of quality ranges. The prices vary widely
and the supply of the very best is strictly limited. I have no reason to
believe that corks made from fully mature trees and using great care in
selection, do not have a lower degree of contamination, though this would be
random and variable. I think this is almost the only explanation as to WHY
experiences very, and WHY the levels of contamination have grown. Demand for
cork has spiralled beyond the wildest expectation of the manufacturers, and
there was no WAY it could have been predicted 40 or 50 years ago, when cork
oaks would have had to have been planted to give adequate supplies of top
quality corks now. So more - perhaps most - cork is produced nowadays from
immature trees, and from less propitious areas.

If we look at the production of cork, one thing stands out above all others.
Cork, being produced by trees, will vary, depending upon many factors. I
have seen many suggestions as to how and why cork becomes polluted with TCA.
The most convincing suggestion I've seen so far, is that it is a combination
of the presence of chlorine (used to bleach and sterilise the cork) and
bacterial infection. I have also seen it said that cork taken from younger
trees is more prone to TCA pollution, though I don't know how speculative
this assertion was.

I don't know whether any of this chlorine is present naturally - common salt
consists of 45/68ths chlorine as a chloride, though normally this is pretty
stable and I'd not expect free chlorine to be present from sea salt, I
daresay that some hypothetical bacterial driven redox reaction might be able
to give measurable quantities, but I doubt it is could be a serious
contender for the supply.

Remembering that the major suppliers of cork are in Portugal and, I think,
Slovenia (?) neither of which are renowned as highly developed and
industrialised countries, I can well imagine that research into alternative
methods of sterilising cork has been at best spotty.

Assuming that all cork manufacturers are still processing - faute de mieux -
cork with chlorine, then although this is probably the prime cause, it
doesn't seem to be felt by the manufacturers to practicable at the moment,
despite the intense threat to the industry by Stelvin, to eliminate it.

So we are left with the other factors which seem a bit vague. "Bacterial
infection", "younger trees". Time will solve the second hypothetical cause,
though it seems to me to be doubtful that the wine industry is prepared to
wait for the "younger trees" to become old enough, or for the cork industry
to eliminate chlorine.

Where do we go from here?

Although the quantities are minute, compared with traditional (bottles)
containers, flexible multiple ply plastic bags with taps work very well
indeed for wines to be drunk within say 3 to 4 months of filling. Given the
proportion of wines (bought in bottles) drunk within a week of purchase, I
would suggest that this method will see a huge expansion. It deserves to. I
have not detected taint of any kind in this type of container.

Another possibility would be to use cans. I have seen wine marketed in this
way, but so far, it has been very much lower end wine.

Turning back to bottles, the alternatives to cork are three fold, I think.
a) Crown caps (as used for aging champagne),
b) synthetic cork shaped closures, which theoretically can be opened with
corkscrews,
c)Stelvin or other screwcap.

On the surface, and from the point of view of the wine maker, b) seems to
have all the advantages, as they can use their existing bottling lines, and
just change their supplier of "corks". However, all the information I've
seen has agreed that these plastic closures lead to other off flavours in
the wine. So for a serious wine maker, it is no solution to substitute one
contaminating closure for another.

That leaves crown caps and Stelvin. Both are costly solutions. In both
cases, the winemaker would have to change his bottling line to adopt them
and this is a serious investment to envisage. That said, it is perfectly
possible that, just as there are mobile cork based bottling lines which
travel around the wineries, so there will be mobile bottling plants using
crown caps or screw caps. It is also true that small producers can even hand
seal using crown caps, I've done it myself for beer.

What is certain is that as more and more ordinary wine is bottled either
exclusively under synthetic closures, or as an optional extra, so consumer
acceptance will grow. It's FAR easier to unscrew Stelvin or even to rip off
a crown cap, than to pull a cork - they stick, they crumble, they break up,
they break in half, there's a whole litany of problems that accompany
pulling a cork. In at least one supermarket in the UK, they won't buy ANY
wine not under synthetic closures. Consumer law in the UK rightly gives the
consumer the right to expect to buy a product of "merchantable quality", and
gives her/him the right to seek remedy at the point of sale. A corked bottle
ISN'T of merchantable quality, and even if only 10% of clients come back
seeking recompense, this still represents far too great a proportion of
returns to be acceptable, not when the solution exists.

I think that in many countries, we're approaching a cusp where it will be as
unthinkable for the consumers in that country that a winery should NOT offer
wines under screw cap, as it is at present for corks. I hope so, because
While not ALL TCA pollution is cork borne, best estimates suggest that 90%
of it is. Elimination of THAT part would enable winery managers and
consumers to put their finger on exactly how serious winery and barrel borne
infection really is.

When consumer acceptance is virtually universal (except in France, of
course) for "ordinary" wines, then two possibilities arise. It could well be
that the reduction of pressure for cork closures world wide will finally
allow the manufacturers to reduce the proportion of TCA contaminated corks
to a sufficiently low level for them to be acceptable again. They could then
find a "niche" market at the top end, for people who still want to age
wines for 40 years and believe that cork is the "way to go". I find a
parallel in HiFi, where valve based amps and direct cut vinyl have kept a
market, while the great mass of the offer has moved on. Given that corks can
be inserted using small scale machinery, this would be perfectly possible. I
worked at this in a holiday job some 40 years ago, so I know that it is
perfectly possible for one man to bottle a barrel in about an hour, allowing
abt 20 seconds a bottle.

Another possibility is that winemakers, who have installed Stelvin or other
alternative screw cap or crown cap bottling lines, for the lower end wines,
designed to be drunk young, simply abandon corks, even at the top end. I'll
not weep tears for the cork manufacturers, who didn't take the problem of
TCA seriously enough for 20 years. What THEY'll have to do is to find
alternative uses for the raw material. It is still excellent for many things
where there is no food contact.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website

Excellent article Ian

A few comments

World production is led by Portugal, followed by Spain. Together they
cover over 3/4 of world production. Italy, France are both minor
producers. Slovenia is not even on the map.

Small cork stopper producers can turn out consistently good product,
but these are definitely the exception. For example, our firends
Dupere and Barrera use a small producer here in the Var, France. Out
of over 100 of their bottles sampled, I have never had a corked
bottle. They report that nobody has ever found a corked bottle, and
they are quite close to their customers.

I believe that most producers of cork have moved away from chlorine,
and are now using peroxide. This seems to have reduced the problem,
but not much...

TCA has increased as production of cork becomes more volume oriented
and less quality oriented. The above mentioned quality producer
respects the basic rules that had always governed cork production in
the times prior to the disastrous nationalization of the cork forests
in Portugal (they have since been reprivatized, but the damage is
permanent). At the time, cork was grown naturally and production
respected the very long growth cycle of the cork oak. The first bark
was removed after 15 years and DISCARDED, then it took another 15
years to get the first usable bark. Without irrigation, the trees
produced tight bands of bark each year, and it took 12-15 years to
produce the required thickness. Nowadays, trees are irrigated (think
of the environmental consequences, irrigating in areas that are
normally arid) and one can produce a usable bark in 8 years or less,
but the product does not have the longevity and the suppleness of a
real cork. You can actually see the bands on the cork itself, count
them: if you see 6-7 bands, it's no good, better corks have 10-12
visible bands.

Another factor is the drying process. Cork bark must be left to dry
for a long time in a controlled environment. The huge increase in
production means that there is no convenient place to dry this bark,
so at best one finds outdoor shelters with a roof but no walls, but
most often the stuff is just left out in the open, exposed to sun and
rain, maybe with a plastic sheet. I have seen this, in Portugal, in
Spain, in Sardinia. THIS is the most likely place to pick up all kinds
of nasty things. Mold sets in very quickly, the bark is literally
covered in green nasty stuff. In proper conditions, no mold forms and
cleaning can be done with less agressive products. Rain might be
adding some new reagents (acids?) to the moldy bark.

---------


Slight OT, Ian, I have a mission to ship some Chateau Burbank to you,
expect liquid surprise in the mail. Same for you Emery (send me your
address please).

Mike

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 13:09:34 +0200, Ian Hoare
wrote:

Hi,

This is the article I promised Dick I'd write. In passing, I'll try to
address some of the inconsistencies of experience between those who taste
regularly ad professionally, claiming corked wines amount to 5 to 15% of the
total, and those of us who have our collections of old bottles and find
nothing like that proportion.

1. Many of us are pretty insensitive to TCA pollution or rather fail to
recognise it as such, and therefore don't recognise a wine IS corked when it
is.

Having said that many of us don't recognise TCA, I think we have all
experienced bottles where the wine simply doesn't "show" as well as we
expected it to. I guess (pure speculation on my part, but I would submit
from my own experience that it is probably valid) that in many cases, this
is due to TCA in quantities below _our_ capacity to recognise it. Someone
more sensitive might well. This has certainly happened once, in a tasting
with Mark and Andrew in New Zealand. I also DID detect it on a heavily
corked bottle that had Mark rearing away in disgust. Subsequently I detected
it during a blind tasting (of corks vs other closures) in Bordeaux. This
personal experience makes me suspect that I am not as totally insensitive as
I'd thought I was. The corrolary of that, of course, is that I must have
VERY rarely been exposed to TCA previously in [detectable-by-me] quantities.

2. TCA pollution has grown in proportion in recent years. 30 to 40 years
ago, it certainly existed, but was very rare.

This will explain to some extent why those of us who mainly drink fully
mature long aged wines will have experienced many fewer cases of corked
wines than professionals such as Michael Pronay, and others here. These
wines haven't yet passed into our "drinking now" category.

Furthermore, I've seen winery owners claim that by being ultra fussy about
where they buy their corks from, they have very few - if any - cases of
corked wines. I take these claims with a pretty large pinch of salt, but I
think it would be a mistake to reject such evidence out of hand. Why?

Corks are sold under a plethora of quality ranges. The prices vary widely
and the supply of the very best is strictly limited. I have no reason to
believe that corks made from fully mature trees and using great care in
selection, do not have a lower degree of contamination, though this would be
random and variable. I think this is almost the only explanation as to WHY
experiences very, and WHY the levels of contamination have grown. Demand for
cork has spiralled beyond the wildest expectation of the manufacturers, and
there was no WAY it could have been predicted 40 or 50 years ago, when cork
oaks would have had to have been planted to give adequate supplies of top
quality corks now. So more - perhaps most - cork is produced nowadays from
immature trees, and from less propitious areas.

If we look at the production of cork, one thing stands out above all others.
Cork, being produced by trees, will vary, depending upon many factors. I
have seen many suggestions as to how and why cork becomes polluted with TCA.
The most convincing suggestion I've seen so far, is that it is a combination
of the presence of chlorine (used to bleach and sterilise the cork) and
bacterial infection. I have also seen it said that cork taken from younger
trees is more prone to TCA pollution, though I don't know how speculative
this assertion was.

I don't know whether any of this chlorine is present naturally - common salt
consists of 45/68ths chlorine as a chloride, though normally this is pretty
stable and I'd not expect free chlorine to be present from sea salt, I
daresay that some hypothetical bacterial driven redox reaction might be able
to give measurable quantities, but I doubt it is could be a serious
contender for the supply.

Remembering that the major suppliers of cork are in Portugal and, I think,
Slovenia (?) neither of which are renowned as highly developed and
industrialised countries, I can well imagine that research into alternative
methods of sterilising cork has been at best spotty.

Assuming that all cork manufacturers are still processing - faute de mieux -
cork with chlorine, then although this is probably the prime cause, it
doesn't seem to be felt by the manufacturers to practicable at the moment,
despite the intense threat to the industry by Stelvin, to eliminate it.

So we are left with the other factors which seem a bit vague. "Bacterial
infection", "younger trees". Time will solve the second hypothetical cause,
though it seems to me to be doubtful that the wine industry is prepared to
wait for the "younger trees" to become old enough, or for the cork industry
to eliminate chlorine.

Where do we go from here?

Although the quantities are minute, compared with traditional (bottles)
containers, flexible multiple ply plastic bags with taps work very well
indeed for wines to be drunk within say 3 to 4 months of filling. Given the
proportion of wines (bought in bottles) drunk within a week of purchase, I
would suggest that this method will see a huge expansion. It deserves to. I
have not detected taint of any kind in this type of container.

Another possibility would be to use cans. I have seen wine marketed in this
way, but so far, it has been very much lower end wine.

Turning back to bottles, the alternatives to cork are three fold, I think.
a) Crown caps (as used for aging champagne),
b) synthetic cork shaped closures, which theoretically can be opened with
corkscrews,
c)Stelvin or other screwcap.

On the surface, and from the point of view of the wine maker, b) seems to
have all the advantages, as they can use their existing bottling lines, and
just change their supplier of "corks". However, all the information I've
seen has agreed that these plastic closures lead to other off flavours in
the wine. So for a serious wine maker, it is no solution to substitute one
contaminating closure for another.

That leaves crown caps and Stelvin. Both are costly solutions. In both
cases, the winemaker would have to change his bottling line to adopt them
and this is a serious investment to envisage. That said, it is perfectly
possible that, just as there are mobile cork based bottling lines which
travel around the wineries, so there will be mobile bottling plants using
crown caps or screw caps. It is also true that small producers can even hand
seal using crown caps, I've done it myself for beer.

What is certain is that as more and more ordinary wine is bottled either
exclusively under synthetic closures, or as an optional extra, so consumer
acceptance will grow. It's FAR easier to unscrew Stelvin or even to rip off
a crown cap, than to pull a cork - they stick, they crumble, they break up,
they break in half, there's a whole litany of problems that accompany
pulling a cork. In at least one supermarket in the UK, they won't buy ANY
wine not under synthetic closures. Consumer law in the UK rightly gives the
consumer the right to expect to buy a product of "merchantable quality", and
gives her/him the right to seek remedy at the point of sale. A corked bottle
ISN'T of merchantable quality, and even if only 10% of clients come back
seeking recompense, this still represents far too great a proportion of
returns to be acceptable, not when the solution exists.

I think that in many countries, we're approaching a cusp where it will be as
unthinkable for the consumers in that country that a winery should NOT offer
wines under screw cap, as it is at present for corks. I hope so, because
While not ALL TCA pollution is cork borne, best estimates suggest that 90%
of it is. Elimination of THAT part would enable winery managers and
consumers to put their finger on exactly how serious winery and barrel borne
infection really is.

When consumer acceptance is virtually universal (except in France, of
course) for "ordinary" wines, then two possibilities arise. It could well be
that the reduction of pressure for cork closures world wide will finally
allow the manufacturers to reduce the proportion of TCA contaminated corks
to a sufficiently low level for them to be acceptable again. They could then
find a "niche" market at the top end, for people who still want to age
wines for 40 years and believe that cork is the "way to go". I find a
parallel in HiFi, where valve based amps and direct cut vinyl have kept a
market, while the great mass of the offer has moved on. Given that corks can
be inserted using small scale machinery, this would be perfectly possible. I
worked at this in a holiday job some 40 years ago, so I know that it is
perfectly possible for one man to bottle a barrel in about an hour, allowing
abt 20 seconds a bottle.

Another possibility is that winemakers, who have installed Stelvin or other
alternative screw cap or crown cap bottling lines, for the lower end wines,
designed to be drunk young, simply abandon corks, even at the top end. I'll
not weep tears for the cork manufacturers, who didn't take the problem of
TCA seriously enough for 20 years. What THEY'll have to do is to find
alternative uses for the raw material. It is still excellent for many things
where there is no food contact.


Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France
email link http://www.tommasi.org/mymail

Ian, I think you made some very good points.

I think of myself on the less-sensitive end of the spectrum. But tasting with
some more sensitive folks has led me to perhaps be a little better at detecting
lesser concentrations of TCA. When I encounter a bottle that seems to lack
fruit vs. what I expect, I go looking for mustiness. Sometimes I find it,
sometimes not. I'd say that my experience is now in the 5-8% range. I find it
believable that 10+% of the bottles I drink could be contaminated.

While I am a supporter of switching to screwcaps, I still support better
quality control for those that do use natural cork- I never again want to have
a corked bottle of Lafleur!

I've also heard some reports that there have been real improvements with some
synthetic corks (the extruded ones seem clearly better than the others), and
don't mind those on "drink now" wines.

best,
Dale

Dale Williams
Drop "damnspam" to reply

Ian, I think you made some very good points.

I think of myself on the less-sensitive end of the spectrum. But tasting with
some more sensitive folks has led me to perhaps be a little better at detecting
lesser concentrations of TCA. When I encounter a bottle that seems to lack
fruit vs. what I expect, I go looking for mustiness. Sometimes I find it,
sometimes not. I'd say that my experience is now in the 5-8% range. I find it
believable that 10+% of the bottles I drink could be contaminated.

While I am a supporter of switching to screwcaps, I still support better
quality control for those that do use natural cork- I never again want to have
a corked bottle of Lafleur!

I've also heard some reports that there have been real improvements with some
synthetic corks (the extruded ones seem clearly better than the others), and
don't mind those on "drink now" wines.

best,
Dale

Dale Williams
Drop "damnspam" to reply

Very Good article. Thanks. I must not be overly senstive but I did have an
inexpensive Gevry Chambartin recently that seemed a bit off. Probably was
TCA and my wife drank it. I opened another bottle.

Thanks again.


"Ian Hoare" wrote in message
...
Hi,

This is the article I promised Dick I'd write. In passing, I'll try to
address some of the inconsistencies of experience between those who taste
regularly ad professionally, claiming corked wines amount to 5 to 15% of
the
total, and those of us who have our collections of old bottles and find
nothing like that proportion.

1. Many of us are pretty insensitive to TCA pollution or rather fail to
recognise it as such, and therefore don't recognise a wine IS corked when
it
is.

Having said that many of us don't recognise TCA, I think we have all
experienced bottles where the wine simply doesn't "show" as well as we
expected it to. I guess (pure speculation on my part, but I would submit
from my own experience that it is probably valid) that in many cases, this
is due to TCA in quantities below _our_ capacity to recognise it. Someone
more sensitive might well. This has certainly happened once, in a tasting
with Mark and Andrew in New Zealand. I also DID detect it on a heavily
corked bottle that had Mark rearing away in disgust. Subsequently I
detected
it during a blind tasting (of corks vs other closures) in Bordeaux. This
personal experience makes me suspect that I am not as totally insensitive
as
I'd thought I was. The corrolary of that, of course, is that I must have
VERY rarely been exposed to TCA previously in [detectable-by-me]
quantities.

2. TCA pollution has grown in proportion in recent years. 30 to 40 years
ago, it certainly existed, but was very rare.

This will explain to some extent why those of us who mainly drink fully
mature long aged wines will have experienced many fewer cases of corked
wines than professionals such as Michael Pronay, and others here. These
wines haven't yet passed into our "drinking now" category.

Furthermore, I've seen winery owners claim that by being ultra fussy about
where they buy their corks from, they have very few - if any - cases of
corked wines. I take these claims with a pretty large pinch of salt, but I
think it would be a mistake to reject such evidence out of hand. Why?

Corks are sold under a plethora of quality ranges. The prices vary widely
and the supply of the very best is strictly limited. I have no reason to
believe that corks made from fully mature trees and using great care in
selection, do not have a lower degree of contamination, though this would
be
random and variable. I think this is almost the only explanation as to WHY
experiences very, and WHY the levels of contamination have grown. Demand
for
cork has spiralled beyond the wildest expectation of the manufacturers,
and
there was no WAY it could have been predicted 40 or 50 years ago, when
cork
oaks would have had to have been planted to give adequate supplies of top
quality corks now. So more - perhaps most - cork is produced nowadays from
immature trees, and from less propitious areas.

If we look at the production of cork, one thing stands out above all
others.
Cork, being produced by trees, will vary, depending upon many factors. I
have seen many suggestions as to how and why cork becomes polluted with
TCA.
The most convincing suggestion I've seen so far, is that it is a
combination
of the presence of chlorine (used to bleach and sterilise the cork) and
bacterial infection. I have also seen it said that cork taken from younger
trees is more prone to TCA pollution, though I don't know how speculative
this assertion was.

I don't know whether any of this chlorine is present naturally - common
salt
consists of 45/68ths chlorine as a chloride, though normally this is
pretty
stable and I'd not expect free chlorine to be present from sea salt, I
daresay that some hypothetical bacterial driven redox reaction might be
able
to give measurable quantities, but I doubt it is could be a serious
contender for the supply.

Remembering that the major suppliers of cork are in Portugal and, I think,
Slovenia (?) neither of which are renowned as highly developed and
industrialised countries, I can well imagine that research into
alternative
methods of sterilising cork has been at best spotty.

Assuming that all cork manufacturers are still processing - faute de
mieux -
cork with chlorine, then although this is probably the prime cause, it
doesn't seem to be felt by the manufacturers to practicable at the moment,
despite the intense threat to the industry by Stelvin, to eliminate it.

So we are left with the other factors which seem a bit vague. "Bacterial
infection", "younger trees". Time will solve the second hypothetical
cause,
though it seems to me to be doubtful that the wine industry is prepared to
wait for the "younger trees" to become old enough, or for the cork
industry
to eliminate chlorine.

Where do we go from here?

Although the quantities are minute, compared with traditional (bottles)
containers, flexible multiple ply plastic bags with taps work very well
indeed for wines to be drunk within say 3 to 4 months of filling. Given
the
proportion of wines (bought in bottles) drunk within a week of purchase, I
would suggest that this method will see a huge expansion. It deserves to.
I
have not detected taint of any kind in this type of container.

Another possibility would be to use cans. I have seen wine marketed in
this
way, but so far, it has been very much lower end wine.

Turning back to bottles, the alternatives to cork are three fold, I think.
a) Crown caps (as used for aging champagne),
b) synthetic cork shaped closures, which theoretically can be opened with
corkscrews,
c)Stelvin or other screwcap.

On the surface, and from the point of view of the wine maker, b) seems to
have all the advantages, as they can use their existing bottling lines,
and
just change their supplier of "corks". However, all the information I've
seen has agreed that these plastic closures lead to other off flavours in
the wine. So for a serious wine maker, it is no solution to substitute
one
contaminating closure for another.

That leaves crown caps and Stelvin. Both are costly solutions. In both
cases, the winemaker would have to change his bottling line to adopt them
and this is a serious investment to envisage. That said, it is perfectly
possible that, just as there are mobile cork based bottling lines which
travel around the wineries, so there will be mobile bottling plants using
crown caps or screw caps. It is also true that small producers can even
hand
seal using crown caps, I've done it myself for beer.

What is certain is that as more and more ordinary wine is bottled either
exclusively under synthetic closures, or as an optional extra, so consumer
acceptance will grow. It's FAR easier to unscrew Stelvin or even to rip
off
a crown cap, than to pull a cork - they stick, they crumble, they break
up,
they break in half, there's a whole litany of problems that accompany
pulling a cork. In at least one supermarket in the UK, they won't buy ANY
wine not under synthetic closures. Consumer law in the UK rightly gives
the
consumer the right to expect to buy a product of "merchantable quality",
and
gives her/him the right to seek remedy at the point of sale. A corked
bottle
ISN'T of merchantable quality, and even if only 10% of clients come back
seeking recompense, this still represents far too great a proportion of
returns to be acceptable, not when the solution exists.

I think that in many countries, we're approaching a cusp where it will be
as
unthinkable for the consumers in that country that a winery should NOT
offer
wines under screw cap, as it is at present for corks. I hope so, because
While not ALL TCA pollution is cork borne, best estimates suggest that 90%
of it is. Elimination of THAT part would enable winery managers and
consumers to put their finger on exactly how serious winery and barrel
borne
infection really is.

When consumer acceptance is virtually universal (except in France, of
course) for "ordinary" wines, then two possibilities arise. It could well
be
that the reduction of pressure for cork closures world wide will finally
allow the manufacturers to reduce the proportion of TCA contaminated corks
to a sufficiently low level for them to be acceptable again. They could
then
find a "niche" market at the top end, for people who still want to age
wines for 40 years and believe that cork is the "way to go". I find a
parallel in HiFi, where valve based amps and direct cut vinyl have kept a
market, while the great mass of the offer has moved on. Given that corks
can
be inserted using small scale machinery, this would be perfectly possible.
I
worked at this in a holiday job some 40 years ago, so I know that it is
perfectly possible for one man to bottle a barrel in about an hour,
allowing
abt 20 seconds a bottle.

Another possibility is that winemakers, who have installed Stelvin or
other
alternative screw cap or crown cap bottling lines, for the lower end
wines,
designed to be drunk young, simply abandon corks, even at the top end.
I'll
not weep tears for the cork manufacturers, who didn't take the problem of
TCA seriously enough for 20 years. What THEY'll have to do is to find
alternative uses for the raw material. It is still excellent for many
things
where there is no food contact.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website

Very Good article. Thanks. I must not be overly senstive but I did have an
inexpensive Gevry Chambartin recently that seemed a bit off. Probably was
TCA and my wife drank it. I opened another bottle.

Thanks again.


"Ian Hoare" wrote in message
...
Hi,

This is the article I promised Dick I'd write. In passing, I'll try to
address some of the inconsistencies of experience between those who taste
regularly ad professionally, claiming corked wines amount to 5 to 15% of
the
total, and those of us who have our collections of old bottles and find
nothing like that proportion.

1. Many of us are pretty insensitive to TCA pollution or rather fail to
recognise it as such, and therefore don't recognise a wine IS corked when
it
is.

Having said that many of us don't recognise TCA, I think we have all
experienced bottles where the wine simply doesn't "show" as well as we
expected it to. I guess (pure speculation on my part, but I would submit
from my own experience that it is probably valid) that in many cases, this
is due to TCA in quantities below _our_ capacity to recognise it. Someone
more sensitive might well. This has certainly happened once, in a tasting
with Mark and Andrew in New Zealand. I also DID detect it on a heavily
corked bottle that had Mark rearing away in disgust. Subsequently I
detected
it during a blind tasting (of corks vs other closures) in Bordeaux. This
personal experience makes me suspect that I am not as totally insensitive
as
I'd thought I was. The corrolary of that, of course, is that I must have
VERY rarely been exposed to TCA previously in [detectable-by-me]
quantities.

2. TCA pollution has grown in proportion in recent years. 30 to 40 years
ago, it certainly existed, but was very rare.

This will explain to some extent why those of us who mainly drink fully
mature long aged wines will have experienced many fewer cases of corked
wines than professionals such as Michael Pronay, and others here. These
wines haven't yet passed into our "drinking now" category.

Furthermore, I've seen winery owners claim that by being ultra fussy about
where they buy their corks from, they have very few - if any - cases of
corked wines. I take these claims with a pretty large pinch of salt, but I
think it would be a mistake to reject such evidence out of hand. Why?

Corks are sold under a plethora of quality ranges. The prices vary widely
and the supply of the very best is strictly limited. I have no reason to
believe that corks made from fully mature trees and using great care in
selection, do not have a lower degree of contamination, though this would
be
random and variable. I think this is almost the only explanation as to WHY
experiences very, and WHY the levels of contamination have grown. Demand
for
cork has spiralled beyond the wildest expectation of the manufacturers,
and
there was no WAY it could have been predicted 40 or 50 years ago, when
cork
oaks would have had to have been planted to give adequate supplies of top
quality corks now. So more - perhaps most - cork is produced nowadays from
immature trees, and from less propitious areas.

If we look at the production of cork, one thing stands out above all
others.
Cork, being produced by trees, will vary, depending upon many factors. I
have seen many suggestions as to how and why cork becomes polluted with
TCA.
The most convincing suggestion I've seen so far, is that it is a
combination
of the presence of chlorine (used to bleach and sterilise the cork) and
bacterial infection. I have also seen it said that cork taken from younger
trees is more prone to TCA pollution, though I don't know how speculative
this assertion was.

I don't know whether any of this chlorine is present naturally - common
salt
consists of 45/68ths chlorine as a chloride, though normally this is
pretty
stable and I'd not expect free chlorine to be present from sea salt, I
daresay that some hypothetical bacterial driven redox reaction might be
able
to give measurable quantities, but I doubt it is could be a serious
contender for the supply.

Remembering that the major suppliers of cork are in Portugal and, I think,
Slovenia (?) neither of which are renowned as highly developed and
industrialised countries, I can well imagine that research into
alternative
methods of sterilising cork has been at best spotty.

Assuming that all cork manufacturers are still processing - faute de
mieux -
cork with chlorine, then although this is probably the prime cause, it
doesn't seem to be felt by the manufacturers to practicable at the moment,
despite the intense threat to the industry by Stelvin, to eliminate it.

So we are left with the other factors which seem a bit vague. "Bacterial
infection", "younger trees". Time will solve the second hypothetical
cause,
though it seems to me to be doubtful that the wine industry is prepared to
wait for the "younger trees" to become old enough, or for the cork
industry
to eliminate chlorine.

Where do we go from here?

Although the quantities are minute, compared with traditional (bottles)
containers, flexible multiple ply plastic bags with taps work very well
indeed for wines to be drunk within say 3 to 4 months of filling. Given
the
proportion of wines (bought in bottles) drunk within a week of purchase, I
would suggest that this method will see a huge expansion. It deserves to.
I
have not detected taint of any kind in this type of container.

Another possibility would be to use cans. I have seen wine marketed in
this
way, but so far, it has been very much lower end wine.

Turning back to bottles, the alternatives to cork are three fold, I think.
a) Crown caps (as used for aging champagne),
b) synthetic cork shaped closures, which theoretically can be opened with
corkscrews,
c)Stelvin or other screwcap.

On the surface, and from the point of view of the wine maker, b) seems to
have all the advantages, as they can use their existing bottling lines,
and
just change their supplier of "corks". However, all the information I've
seen has agreed that these plastic closures lead to other off flavours in
the wine. So for a serious wine maker, it is no solution to substitute
one
contaminating closure for another.

That leaves crown caps and Stelvin. Both are costly solutions. In both
cases, the winemaker would have to change his bottling line to adopt them
and this is a serious investment to envisage. That said, it is perfectly
possible that, just as there are mobile cork based bottling lines which
travel around the wineries, so there will be mobile bottling plants using
crown caps or screw caps. It is also true that small producers can even
hand
seal using crown caps, I've done it myself for beer.

What is certain is that as more and more ordinary wine is bottled either
exclusively under synthetic closures, or as an optional extra, so consumer
acceptance will grow. It's FAR easier to unscrew Stelvin or even to rip
off
a crown cap, than to pull a cork - they stick, they crumble, they break
up,
they break in half, there's a whole litany of problems that accompany
pulling a cork. In at least one supermarket in the UK, they won't buy ANY
wine not under synthetic closures. Consumer law in the UK rightly gives
the
consumer the right to expect to buy a product of "merchantable quality",
and
gives her/him the right to seek remedy at the point of sale. A corked
bottle
ISN'T of merchantable quality, and even if only 10% of clients come back
seeking recompense, this still represents far too great a proportion of
returns to be acceptable, not when the solution exists.

I think that in many countries, we're approaching a cusp where it will be
as
unthinkable for the consumers in that country that a winery should NOT
offer
wines under screw cap, as it is at present for corks. I hope so, because
While not ALL TCA pollution is cork borne, best estimates suggest that 90%
of it is. Elimination of THAT part would enable winery managers and
consumers to put their finger on exactly how serious winery and barrel
borne
infection really is.

When consumer acceptance is virtually universal (except in France, of
course) for "ordinary" wines, then two possibilities arise. It could well
be
that the reduction of pressure for cork closures world wide will finally
allow the manufacturers to reduce the proportion of TCA contaminated corks
to a sufficiently low level for them to be acceptable again. They could
then
find a "niche" market at the top end, for people who still want to age
wines for 40 years and believe that cork is the "way to go". I find a
parallel in HiFi, where valve based amps and direct cut vinyl have kept a
market, while the great mass of the offer has moved on. Given that corks
can
be inserted using small scale machinery, this would be perfectly possible.
I
worked at this in a holiday job some 40 years ago, so I know that it is
perfectly possible for one man to bottle a barrel in about an hour,
allowing
abt 20 seconds a bottle.

Another possibility is that winemakers, who have installed Stelvin or
other
alternative screw cap or crown cap bottling lines, for the lower end
wines,
designed to be drunk young, simply abandon corks, even at the top end.
I'll
not weep tears for the cork manufacturers, who didn't take the problem of
TCA seriously enough for 20 years. What THEY'll have to do is to find
alternative uses for the raw material. It is still excellent for many
things
where there is no food contact.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website

Salut/Hi Mike Tommasi,

le/on Thu, 16 Sep 2004 18:02:17 +0200, tu disais/you said:-

Excellent article Ian

Thanks Mike.

World production is led by Portugal, followed by Spain. Together they
cover over 3/4 of world production. Italy, France are both minor
producers. Slovenia is not even on the map.

That's interesting, as I seem to remember reading in abrège.com that it was
a significant player. But it's a while since I translated it, and so my
memory may be playing me false.

Small cork stopper producers can turn out consistently good product,
but these are definitely the exception.

I didn't know that. Interesting.

Dupere and Barrera use a small producer here in the Var, France. Out
of over 100 of their bottles sampled, I have never had a corked
bottle. They report that nobody has ever found a corked bottle, and
they are quite close to their customers.

They certainly are, and from what I know of them, they wouldn't tell
porkies, either.

I believe that most producers of cork have moved away from chlorine,
and are now using peroxide. This seems to have reduced the problem,
but not much...

Interesting. So that would imply that my fundamental hypothesis about the
source of the chlorine in TCA (TriChloroAnisole iirc) is not correct. So
where does the chlorine come from then?

TCA has increased as production of cork becomes more volume oriented
and less quality oriented.

More or less as I said.

permanent). At the time, cork was grown naturally and production
respected the very long growth cycle of the cork oak. The first bark
was removed after 15 years and DISCARDED, then it took another 15
years to get the first usable bark. Without irrigation, the trees
produced tight bands of bark each year, and it took 12-15 years to
produce the required thickness. Nowadays, trees are irrigated (think
of the environmental consequences, irrigating in areas that are
normally arid) and one can produce a usable bark in 8 years or less,
but the product does not have the longevity and the suppleness of a
real cork. You can actually see the bands on the cork itself, count
them: if you see 6-7 bands, it's no good, better corks have 10-12
visible bands.

Thanks very much for that explanation, which was a very useful expansion.


Spain, in Sardinia. THIS is the most likely place to pick up all kinds
of nasty things. Mold sets in very quickly, the bark is literally
covered in green nasty stuff. In proper conditions, no mold forms and
cleaning can be done with less agressive products. Rain might be
adding some new reagents (acids?) to the moldy bark.

I can certainly understand all that, though I'm still uneasy about where the
chlorine comes from.

Slight OT, Ian, I have a mission to ship some Chateau Burbank to you,
expect liquid surprise in the mail.

Not altogether a surprise, but it will be a VERY pleasant parcel to receive.
YIPPEE.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website

Salut/Hi Mike Tommasi,

le/on Thu, 16 Sep 2004 18:02:17 +0200, tu disais/you said:-

Excellent article Ian

Thanks Mike.

World production is led by Portugal, followed by Spain. Together they
cover over 3/4 of world production. Italy, France are both minor
producers. Slovenia is not even on the map.

That's interesting, as I seem to remember reading in abrège.com that it was
a significant player. But it's a while since I translated it, and so my
memory may be playing me false.

Small cork stopper producers can turn out consistently good product,
but these are definitely the exception.

I didn't know that. Interesting.

Dupere and Barrera use a small producer here in the Var, France. Out
of over 100 of their bottles sampled, I have never had a corked
bottle. They report that nobody has ever found a corked bottle, and
they are quite close to their customers.

They certainly are, and from what I know of them, they wouldn't tell
porkies, either.

I believe that most producers of cork have moved away from chlorine,
and are now using peroxide. This seems to have reduced the problem,
but not much...

Interesting. So that would imply that my fundamental hypothesis about the
source of the chlorine in TCA (TriChloroAnisole iirc) is not correct. So
where does the chlorine come from then?

TCA has increased as production of cork becomes more volume oriented
and less quality oriented.

More or less as I said.

permanent). At the time, cork was grown naturally and production
respected the very long growth cycle of the cork oak. The first bark
was removed after 15 years and DISCARDED, then it took another 15
years to get the first usable bark. Without irrigation, the trees
produced tight bands of bark each year, and it took 12-15 years to
produce the required thickness. Nowadays, trees are irrigated (think
of the environmental consequences, irrigating in areas that are
normally arid) and one can produce a usable bark in 8 years or less,
but the product does not have the longevity and the suppleness of a
real cork. You can actually see the bands on the cork itself, count
them: if you see 6-7 bands, it's no good, better corks have 10-12
visible bands.

Thanks very much for that explanation, which was a very useful expansion.


Spain, in Sardinia. THIS is the most likely place to pick up all kinds
of nasty things. Mold sets in very quickly, the bark is literally
covered in green nasty stuff. In proper conditions, no mold forms and
cleaning can be done with less agressive products. Rain might be
adding some new reagents (acids?) to the moldy bark.

I can certainly understand all that, though I'm still uneasy about where the
chlorine comes from.

Slight OT, Ian, I have a mission to ship some Chateau Burbank to you,
expect liquid surprise in the mail.

Not altogether a surprise, but it will be a VERY pleasant parcel to receive.
YIPPEE.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website

Two birds with one stone, he

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 18:02:17 +0200, Mike Tommasi said:

] Excellent article Ian
]

Indeed.

][]
] Small cork stopper producers can turn out consistently good product,
] but these are definitely the exception. For example, our firends
] Dupere and Barrera use a small producer here in the Var, France. Out
] of over 100 of their bottles sampled, I have never had a corked
] bottle. They report that nobody has ever found a corked bottle, and
] they are quite close to their customers.
]

This echos a point I also wanted to underline. But I wonder why, at the
beyond silly prices at the top of the market, folks aren't using these corks?
Surely the incremental cost would be easily absorbed.

[]
] Slight OT, Ian, I have a mission to ship some Chateau Burbank to you,
] expect liquid surprise in the mail. Same for you Emery (send me your
] address please).
]

Ha, I heard that! Tom will be disgusted to learn that I plan to let it sit
a full 3 months to recover from bottle shock. Sorry, that's just the way
I am. (Address under separate cover, thought you already had it.)
Can't wait! Hmm, is it under Stelvin?

[]
] Turning back to bottles, the alternatives to cork are three fold, I think.
] a) Crown caps (as used for aging champagne),
] b) synthetic cork shaped closures, which theoretically can be opened with
] corkscrews,
] c)Stelvin or other screwcap.
]

How about the glass stopper technology we discussed here a few years ago?
I always thought that sounded very promising, but haven't heard a peep about
it since. Lost the link somewhere along the way, IIRC Michael P. provided it
back when.

-E

--
Emery Davis
You can reply to
by removing the well known companies

Two birds with one stone, he

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 18:02:17 +0200, Mike Tommasi said:

] Excellent article Ian
]

Indeed.

][]
] Small cork stopper producers can turn out consistently good product,
] but these are definitely the exception. For example, our firends
] Dupere and Barrera use a small producer here in the Var, France. Out
] of over 100 of their bottles sampled, I have never had a corked
] bottle. They report that nobody has ever found a corked bottle, and
] they are quite close to their customers.
]

This echos a point I also wanted to underline. But I wonder why, at the
beyond silly prices at the top of the market, folks aren't using these corks?
Surely the incremental cost would be easily absorbed.

[]
] Slight OT, Ian, I have a mission to ship some Chateau Burbank to you,
] expect liquid surprise in the mail. Same for you Emery (send me your
] address please).
]

Ha, I heard that! Tom will be disgusted to learn that I plan to let it sit
a full 3 months to recover from bottle shock. Sorry, that's just the way
I am. (Address under separate cover, thought you already had it.)
Can't wait! Hmm, is it under Stelvin?

[]
] Turning back to bottles, the alternatives to cork are three fold, I think.
] a) Crown caps (as used for aging champagne),
] b) synthetic cork shaped closures, which theoretically can be opened with
] corkscrews,
] c)Stelvin or other screwcap.
]

How about the glass stopper technology we discussed here a few years ago?
I always thought that sounded very promising, but haven't heard a peep about
it since. Lost the link somewhere along the way, IIRC Michael P. provided it
back when.

-E

--
Emery Davis
You can reply to
by removing the well known companies

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 22:08:23 +0200, Ian Hoare
wrote:


I believe that most producers of cork have moved away from chlorine,
and are now using peroxide. This seems to have reduced the problem,
but not much...

Interesting. So that would imply that my fundamental hypothesis about the
source of the chlorine in TCA (TriChloroAnisole iirc) is not correct. So
where does the chlorine come from then?

I can only speculate, but either the chlorine is coming from
atmospheric pollution (including any pesticides?) or from the storage
areas. Like I said, drying in storage takes a long time, and these
places must still bear the traces of past contamination.

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France
email link http://www.tommasi.org/mymail

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 22:08:23 +0200, Ian Hoare
wrote:


I believe that most producers of cork have moved away from chlorine,
and are now using peroxide. This seems to have reduced the problem,
but not much...

Interesting. So that would imply that my fundamental hypothesis about the
source of the chlorine in TCA (TriChloroAnisole iirc) is not correct. So
where does the chlorine come from then?

I can only speculate, but either the chlorine is coming from
atmospheric pollution (including any pesticides?) or from the storage
areas. Like I said, drying in storage takes a long time, and these
places must still bear the traces of past contamination.

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France
email link http://www.tommasi.org/mymail

Salut/Hi Richard Neidich,

le/on Thu, 16 Sep 2004 19:26:31 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Very good article. Thanks. I must not be overly sensitive but I did have an
inexpensive Gevrey Chambertin recently that seemed a bit off. Probably was
TCA and my wife drank it. I opened another bottle.

I remember first writing AGES ago about this, and saying that I'd never had
a corked wine. I was jumped on by everyone at the time, but in fact, the
combination of my (seeming) insensitivity to it, and the phenomenon of
drinking old wines, might well have combined to make it valid, if mistaken.
Because in my drinking career, I've certainly had quite a number of bottles
which just weren't "showing well". While some of them MIGHT just not have
been showing well, others might well have had low level TCA.

B y the way, you asked in another thread if I decant everything. No, not
quite. I decant almost all reds (remembering that my use of the word decant
implies just pouring the wine into a decanter even if there's no deposit),
when I remember to do so, and often regret it if I don't. However, I don't
usually decant lesser village Beaujolais and other "vins verts", wines
designed to be drunk chilled and very young. Maybe I ought to try it. As for
whites, I quite often decant these too. It all depends upon whether I feel
the wine needs to keep all it's fresh fruitiness, or not. I've not decanted
many grassy herbaceous Sauvignon Blancs, but DID decant a Meursault
Genevrières 1995 from Michel Bouzereaux, which was definitely improved by
its half an hour in the decanter before being drunk. It went on improving in
the glass, by the way, so maybe should have been allowed to breathe for an
hour. I also quite often decant sweet wines. So I'd say that I decant FAR
more wines than I pour from the bottle. Right or wrong.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website

Salut/Hi Richard Neidich,

le/on Thu, 16 Sep 2004 19:26:31 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Very good article. Thanks. I must not be overly sensitive but I did have an
inexpensive Gevrey Chambertin recently that seemed a bit off. Probably was
TCA and my wife drank it. I opened another bottle.

I remember first writing AGES ago about this, and saying that I'd never had
a corked wine. I was jumped on by everyone at the time, but in fact, the
combination of my (seeming) insensitivity to it, and the phenomenon of
drinking old wines, might well have combined to make it valid, if mistaken.
Because in my drinking career, I've certainly had quite a number of bottles
which just weren't "showing well". While some of them MIGHT just not have
been showing well, others might well have had low level TCA.

B y the way, you asked in another thread if I decant everything. No, not
quite. I decant almost all reds (remembering that my use of the word decant
implies just pouring the wine into a decanter even if there's no deposit),
when I remember to do so, and often regret it if I don't. However, I don't
usually decant lesser village Beaujolais and other "vins verts", wines
designed to be drunk chilled and very young. Maybe I ought to try it. As for
whites, I quite often decant these too. It all depends upon whether I feel
the wine needs to keep all it's fresh fruitiness, or not. I've not decanted
many grassy herbaceous Sauvignon Blancs, but DID decant a Meursault
Genevrières 1995 from Michel Bouzereaux, which was definitely improved by
its half an hour in the decanter before being drunk. It went on improving in
the glass, by the way, so maybe should have been allowed to breathe for an
hour. I also quite often decant sweet wines. So I'd say that I decant FAR
more wines than I pour from the bottle. Right or wrong.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website

Mike Tommasi wrote:

So where does the chlorine come from then?

I can only speculate, but either the chlorine is coming from
atmospheric pollution (including any pesticides?) or from the
storage areas.

Just a guess: How about the chlorine in tap water?

M.