Salut/Hi Nils

le/on Mon, 09 Aug 2004 16:02:19 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

>> No, cork taint that happens at random (99.99 of all cork taints,
>> imnsho) can *never* be attributed to a contaminated winery.

This is a topic that pops up from time to time. If you think about it, an
infected winery _can't_ be responsible for maybe a random 5% of tainted
bottles, and the chances of a complete case of bottles being tainted by cork
borne TCA is infinitesimally low.

Do the calculations. There's about a 1/20 chance of a single bottle being
tainted. For a second bottle its a 1/20*1/20 or 1/400. For a third 1/8000,
for a fourth 1 in 160k and so on.

For NONE to be tainted, on the other hand, you might be surprised that it's
significantly lower than 50:50 .

>Thank you for putting me right. Concerning your other comments in this
>thread, I remember Ian Hoare saying that he is not very sensitive to TCA,
>but, that, he detects, in TCA-tainted wines, a lack of fruit (I apologise to
>Ian if I misremember his statement).

Actually, I've found that I'm somewhat more sensitive than I thought I was.
It's just that as an oeno-necrophile, I'd not opened many bottles corked
since the problem became much more serious! But indeed I did say that
sometimes I've hod wines which didn't seem to be "showing well", lacking in
fruit - or much else either, no noticeable wet dog/cardboard, just under par
compared with what I knew the wine to be capable of.

But you've not misrepresented me at all, Nils.

> Is this in any way in line with what you stated previously about "fruit scalping"? And, is this caused by the
>presence of TCA, or are both ordinarily caused by some third, more original
>fault?

I would say that's exactly what he means. And no, it's not a _common cause",
it's by all accounts typical of low levels of TCA contamination.


--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
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