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In defense of corks

You might have noticed that I'm no fan of cork taint and am more than happy to point out the volatility of protecting winemakers' hard work with a piece of tree bark.

Just last week, I wrote a screed about how we had a nearly 6 percent rate of cork taint during a Pinot Noir judging we conducted. This item surprised fellow wine scribe Mike Dunne of the Sacramento Bee, who said he's noticed a significant drop in tainted wines so far this year.

"I've had just the opposite experience over the past several months, with a noticeable drop in the number of corks tainted with TCA," he wrote. "At (the Dallas Morning News Wine Competition) this past weekend, our panel judged 240 wines and came up with no more than six obviously suffering from TCA or highly suspect. I don't think many of (the wines we judged) were screwcaps or boxes."

Eric Degerman, Wine Press Northwest managing editor, noted the same thing during last month's San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

"Members on two of the 12 panels reported fewer than 10 wines during the three days. Judges average about 120 wines per day for the three days," Eric wrote. "One judge on my panel, who is a winemaker, attributed this to cork producers finally doing something about their TCA problems after years of ignoring/disregarding complaints by consumers and the wine industry. The winemaker said competition provided by screwcaps and other alternative closures was the key."

Famed British wine writer Jancis Robinson also expounded yesterday on what Portugal is finally doing to improve the natural cork industry.

By aperdue at Feb 14 2008 - 8:33am | corks/closures | aperdue's blog | 642 reads

Corkage

You would think that higher-end producers would use higher grade corks to reduce TCA. I would all depend on how much margin they are making on the wine and where they cut costs. I have heard some in the industry say that cork is cork, grade does not matter so it comes down to price.

By robjob at Thu, 02/14/2008 - 9:43am | login or register to post comments

Good corks, bad corks

About 10 years ago, one of Washington's more famous winemakers produced a very special wine. At the time, it was one of the most expensive in the state. The label was meant to be collected, so he was tied onto the bottle, and a little piece of wood from the vineyard was included.

The bottle was tall and gorgeous. The winery spared no expense, buying the most expensive and best corks available.

We tasted the wine under blind conditions for a judging of Cab-based blends. The first bottle was corked, as was the second.

A few months later, I ran into the winemaker and mentioned the problem. Guess what, he said: The failure rate on this exclusive, expensive wine was high, with at least 20 percent of the wines corked.

The cork industry didn't care about the wineries or their customers until the threat of alternative closures started to eat at their bottom line. Now, we're finally seeing real action. For me, it's too little, too late. I trust them about as much as I trust the oil companies.

By aperdue at Thu, 02/14/2008 - 10:08am | login or register to post comments

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