Salut/Hi Cliff,

le/on Sun, 30 Jan 2005 13:41:01 +0000, tu disais/you said:-

>On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 22:37:02 -0600, Cwdjrx _ wrote:

>> Besides the problem of corked wines, this failure of the cork structure
>> with extended contact with wine is the reason I hope screw caps soon
>> become universal.
>
>I find the trend towards screw tops on wine quite depressing. It's going to
>decimate one of the main industries in the Alentejo and other areas where
>there are few alternative sources of employment. Cork is an infinitely
>renewable resource, is biodegradeable, and will not sit around in rubbish
>dumps for hundreds of years like Teflon.

May I be pedantic here to make a point? You say that the move towards
alternative closures will "decimate" the cortk industry. Well, unwittingly
you may be right!! Decimate as an expression dates back to the roman
legions, where disciplinary action included "decimation" it seems. "Decem"
is latin for 10, and decimation meant that one person in ten was selected
for punishment. As there were 100 centurions in a legion (centum means 100)
this meant that 10 (decem again) would be punished - usually by being put to
death. That's what decimated means, and yes, one job in ten MAY just be
lost, although in fact I think that's unlikely.

Allow me to sidetrack for a moment. My wife and I are members of RSPB (for
non UKians, that's similar to the US Audubon Society) and they contacted the
Beeb countryfile program, with an impassioned plea for the plight of the
robin, whose nesting habitat is cork oaks. One wonders who was fooling whom!

I see these two issues (jobs and robins) as a sign that after decades of
complacency, the Portuguese cork industry are getting seriously concerned
and coming up with ever more desperate reasons to continue to use cork
closures for wine.

I agree with you that cork has many virtues, and would be all in favour of
its continuing and even increasing use as a cheap and effective insulant,
for example. However, over the last 40 years, we've seen the proportion of
corked wines increase from an irritating but (IMO) acceptable <1% to the
present day levels. I'll not split hairs with you over whether current
figures are 5%, 8% or 20% or more. My personal opinion is that with extreme
care taken both in manufacturer and selection, some boutique winemakers can
confidently say that the incidence of corked bottles is under 1%. I am
pretty sure, however, that a winemaker such as Penfold in Australia, or
Lurton in France can't afford the very finest quality corks, nor the care in
selection of batches. If they have to rely on the cork manufacturer alone,
I'm sure that figures like 10% or even over 15% would be more or less
correct.

Others have commented upon the acceptability or otherwise of this, and the
difficulty that delays in discovery of a corked wine can pose. I'll not add
to their comments except to say that I share their feelings.

Leaving TCA contamination to one side, anyone who lays down wines will agree
that with time, corks break down in structure. I've seen this start on corks
at around 10 years, but it's generally agreed that the useful life of a cork
is around 30-50 years, at the end of which the bottle needs re-corking. So
again, cork is less than perfect for very long aging, because I hardly need
to mention the risks involved in recorking.

Cork agglomerates are being put forward as being _the_ solution. For short
to medium term storage. The cork manufacturers are saying that new treatment
methods guarantee TCA free closures. If that is the case, I have to wonder
why disks of natural cork are stuck on the wine side in many such corks.
Could it be because of the risk that the glue used is in itself a potential
contaminant?

>I'm very skeptical about tastings which report failure rates of up to 30%.

Why? Because it's not your personal experience. It isn't mine either, but
then we may be lucky/careful in our choice of supplier!

>I suspect any fault in the wine is nowadays ascribed to the cork.

No, no one serious confuses TCA contamination with the other ills to which
wine can succumb. That said, it may be true that in some restaurants,
clients order an expensive wine (too young?) discover that it doesn't
actually taste very nice and therefore try to send it back as corked. It may
even be that the sommelier/manager decides to maintain a polite fiction,
rathr than risk a confrontation.

> Even so, I think a few corked bottles of wine every now and again is a price we
>should be prepared to pay.

Why? To keep an industry that has manifestly failed to do its job alive? If
there were NO alternative, then we might just have to do so, but there IS a
perfectly satisfactory alternative. In fact there are two such. Crown caps
have been used for aging vintage and late bottled champagne for MANY years
with no discernable ill effect, and that they're used for a minimum period
for ALL "methode traditionelle" sparklers. Research has been carried out
into aging wines under Stelvin for at least 10 years, with no ill effects,
and perfectly satisfactory aging.

> I don't think it's fair for us wine drinkers to insist on a zero failure rate for corks, if a consequence of this is to
>destroy the livelihoods of people who have been involved in the industry for generations.

I'm afraid that's a specious argument. No industry has a God given right to
exist. You could just as well have used that logic against the spread of
personal computers, one consequence of which has been the demise of the
industry of copy-typists. You could have used it against the adoption of
cars, which has resulted in the demise of the industry of bargees, amongst
others.

That said, it is my opinion that much of the rise in TCA contamination is
due to too early harvesting of cork, and to be fair to them, they couldn't
have been expected to predict the rise in demand for cork, given the very
long lead time needed.
>
>There are ways of improving the performance of cork, for e.g., by washing
>in hydrogen peroxide,

Too little, too late, I'm afraid.

> but a large part of the problem is that the price for lower grades of cork has come down over the past 20 years or so, and so a
>great many of the problems that are emerging now arise as a result of bottlers using inferior cork in order to save money.

I am not sure you're right here. Firstly, cork manufacturers had no business
introducing cheap corks if that resulted in the present levels of TCA, which
is what is implicit in this last sentence. Secondly, I don't think it's
correct. I think you'll find that prices have risen in real terms,
especially at the top end of the market, while at the same time there has
been a significant rise in levels of TCA contamination.

What I think is likely to happen in the cork industry is that as consumer
acceptance of Stelvin becomes widespread, so more bottlers will switch. The
drop in demand will reduce pressure on the industry to harvest too early.
Faced with the possibility of the demise of cork as a closure, the
manufacturers will eventually eliminate TCA contamination, and at that stage
a new equilibrium will be reached. However, when all the new cork oak
plantations begin to be fully mature, there WILL be a crisis of
overproduction, and new markets will have to be found.

I don't know how true it is, but I read some time ago that bottle closures
represents only 20% of the total demand for cork as a material. If that
dropped to zero, it wouldn't result in the death of the industry.

But as in all spheres of life, adaptability is the prerequisite of survival.
The cork industry faces competition, just as did many others in the past.
Those that adapted, changed to meet demands and new circumstances and
survived, and those that couldn't, didn't. It's up to the cork manufacturers
to react to a new reality. They have serious competition for bottle
closures, and their existing product is far from satisfactory. They'll
either change, or become a niche market, catering to an ever reducing number
of diehard traditionalists.

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