The Wine Knows

Unfortunately, if a wine is corked, there's rarely any recourse but to pour it out and move on.

I am pretty sensitive to TCA, the compound that causes a wine to smell like a wet dog, but I've smelled wines that have other aromas that might remind me of flaws, such as barnyard notes or volatile acidity (which smells like fingernail polish remover). Some of these aromas might "blow off" after a bit or I simply become used to them.

However, I've not known TCA to blow off. Rather, it gets more intense as the wine opens up.

In my experience, defects such as volatile acidity sometimes "blow off", but a corked wine with TCA gets worse very rapidly. By the way, the TCA doesn't always come from the cork. It lingers in wineries on certain parts of wine barrels, and even on the cardboard cartons wine is shipped in. But once in gets into the wine it develops so quickly that you will think that your sweat socks have turned into a veritable gym in a matter of minutes.

Mitch here are some sites I found along with cheap WSU pubs on Home Wine Making . My friend makes wine at home and he says there is a surplus of grapes out there . He gets his grapes from a wine and Beer supply store behind Mchord AFB near Spanaway. steve

http://cru84.cahe.wsu.edu/cgi-bin/pubs/EB0719.html

http://www.washingtonwinemakers.org/learn.htm

http://www.a2zwines.com/homewinemaking/

http://www.homewine.com/news.html

http://www.brehmvineyards.com/articles/funwithgrapes.html

http://www.psawbc.org/

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/referenc.asp

http://home.comcast.net/~jimalexander2/BeginningWinemakingTips.htm

http://home.comcast.net/~jimalexander2/Downloads.htm