Here's a bizarre story: at our annual end-of-semester Bacchanalia for
our research groups, Jean opened a bottle of the 2000 Rosenblum Rockpile
Road Zinfandel (in a moment of tipsy impetuosity) in our cellar only to
find that it was horribly corked! Every person who smelled the bottle
agreed. Today, 3 days later, I came upon the open bottle sitting in
the cellar and brought it up for disposal. In a spirit of scientific
inquiry, I decided to smell it before getting rid of the nearly full
bottle, and much to my shock I could detect no trace of TCA! What's
more, when I tasted the wine, it tasted perfectly normal with all the
fruit, chocolate and other elements that I would expect to be present
(if a bit more plummy than a 3 year-old Zin should be). Keeping in
mind that I am *very* TCA-sensitive, I can only conclude that the TCA
that was originally present either completely evaporated or oxidized to
some non-odoriferous derivative. Obviously, this "remedy" would hardly
be of benefit to any but the most sturdy of young, red wines but could
possibly be used to rehabilitate a corked wine that was either
irreplacable or of great value. I wonder now how our bottle would have
smelled 24 or 48 hours earlier...

Mark Lipton