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Corks care not about the wines beneath them

On Friday, the Wine Press Northwest crew was working through its weekly double-blind tasting of 32 wines. In the third flight, the judges came across a wine that was badly corked. It is said that TCA can be detected at levels as low as six parts per trillion. If that's so, then this one must have been 10 times that level.

The wine was a Col Solare 2000 Red Wine, a collaborative effort of Chateau Ste. Michelle of Woodinville, Wash., and the Antinori family of Tuscany. It is, arguably, one of the state's most celebrated, famous and revered wines. At $75, it's one of Washington's most expensive.

No corners were cut in the making of this wine, from the selection of the finest grapes to the barrels to label design to the marketing campaign. Certainly, the new $6 million winery on Red Mountain is testament to the care that goes into Col Solare. This wine represents the finest and most beloved effort from Washington's flagship winery.

The corks selected for Col Solare were from some of Portugal's finest producers, known for their quality and low incidents of TCA. The bales of corks that arrived at the winery were tested repeatedly to further ensure quality. The corks that go into every bottle of Col Solare are some of the most expensive available because a great wine deserves that level of attention to detail.

Indeed, the producers of this great wine did everything in their power - short of not using corks - to ensure that this wine would be perfect upon being opened.

Yet despite years of hard work by the grape growers who nurtured the fruit and the winemaking of Doug Gore, Renzo Cotarella and Marcus Notaro, this bottle of wine was ruined by a particular cork's failure.

A wine like this is meant to be saved for a special occasion. Imagine purchasing this wine, cellaring it for several years until just the right opportunity presented itself. Imagine opening the bottle, expecting the moment to become magical, only to be greeted with aromas that remind you of a wet dog sleeping on rotting cardboard in a musty basement. The joy and elation vanish, replaced by embarrassment, sadness and anger.

I don't care if this was the only bottle of Col Solare 2000 that was corked. It should be a crime.

By aperdue at Feb 17 2008 - 10:38am | corks/closures | Washington | aperdue's blog | 926 reads

Cork Solutions

Andy, I am a firm believer in alternative closures for wines, whether screwcap (which I use for my table wines), glass stoppers (Sinnean bottled some under this new closure), and recently, a cork called DIAM, from Oeneo closures. I have bottled all of my high end wines under this closure for 2 vintages, have opened more bottles than any of my customers, and have 0% TCA with these corks. Nor have I had a restaurant, retailer, or customer contact me because of a faulty cork (and I would take the wine back in a second if they did). There are a ton of great articles on this closure here http://www.oeneoclosuresusa.com/press.phtml .

The saddest part of corked bottles is that the end consumer will end up eating the cost of the bottle 99% of the time, not the cork manufacturer. Either the customer will dump it down the drain, the restaurant will eat the cost of the bottle (if it is even detected by the customer) or in a rare instance, the winery will have the clarity to take the bottle back. In any of these circumstances, there is no winner.

Lastly, I would bottle all of my wines under screwcap if I thought that all of my current customers would purchase a $50/bottle of wine under this closure, but I am not convinced that they would, so I use the Diam.

Trey

By wallawallapj at Fri, 02/22/2008 - 2:27pm | login or register to post comments

Closures

Trey,

I just finished To Cork or Not to Cork, which was very enlightening.

I came away convinced there is no perfect solution. The Diam closures are the resurrection of the old Altechs, which messed up a lot of people's wines. It sounds to me (from you and many other sources) that the problems with Altechs have been solved with Diam.

It also sounds like cork companies are finally doing the work to fix the cork problem. Unfortunately, it took them losing 20 percent of their marketshare to get to that point.

It's a good lesson in hubris. The problem now is regaining trust in the industry and customers.

By aperdue at Fri, 02/22/2008 - 3:51pm | login or register to post comments

Quick to Judge Corks

First, cork taint is a serious problem that hasn't gone away.
Second, that bottle mustiness simply is not always from a tainted cork.
Working at a busy wine bar, I open prob 25-30 bottles a night and smell each. I find tainted bottles >5 percent of the time. And guess what? A few of these tainted bottles are screwcapped (and pricey to boot).
That damp and musty fault in wines has other sources and causes than cork. TCA can live in the winery; coming in on pallettes and cartons; infesting wooden beams.
TBA (2,4,6-tribromoanisole), another type of contamination difficult to differentiate from TCA is apparently a serious concern in South American wineries and elsewhere. TBA is more of an environmental problem in a winery, yet it is too easy to blame cork supplies in the short term in order to put off expensive facility cleaning.
I have read where just a few particles of cardboard dust settling in bottles on the bottling line could lead to a few bad wine experiences for the unlucky customer.
It has been understood for sometime that not all wine taints are cork-derived.
There are a host of compounds, TCA included, which can cause taint and that do not necessarily come from cork. It would seem to behoove the whole industry if we show understanding that taints can come from the environment in which wine is stored.
Yet here we are, painting with too wide a brush and blaming cork suppliers for all taint.

By randyree at Tue, 02/19/2008 - 9:13am | login or register to post comments

Judging cork

I don't think I'm quick to judge corks. It comes from years of disappointment.

You are correct to say that TCA (and TBA) taint can come from other sources. I, too, have been surprised to once get TCA taint from a bottle under screwcap. It turns out the winery (in Southern California) had TCA in one of its ancient wooden tanks.

In my current reading of To Cork or not to Cork, there are a couple of chapters dealing with TCA taint coming from sources other than cork.

However, when we pull the cork on a bottle only to find it tainted with TCA, then pull the cork on a second bottle and find it to be untainted - even delicious - the overwhelming evidence is that the cork is the source of the taint.

At times, we've seen cork taint from multiple bottles of the same wine. They were topped with the old Altech corks, which caused so many problems a few years ago. Again, the overwhelming evidence points to the cork rather than the facility.

Fortunately, most wineries do not use chlorine to clean their facilities anymore, switching to peroxide or other cleansers that do not promote the development of TCA. That reduces the number of sources that could cause the wines to be ruined by TCA.

By aperdue at Tue, 02/19/2008 - 10:50am | login or register to post comments

diam

Andy,

The Diam is indeed produced by the folks who brought us the synthetic closure. They certainly learned their lesson. Along with the absence of TCA in the DIAM corks, I have noticed that even older bottles (I bottled the 2004 Basel Merlot under this closure) show no signs of seepage, which natural corks will show even in perfectly stored cellars because each cork is different in small ways. Each Diam is technically the same. Another win in my book.

Trey

By wallawallapj at Sat, 02/23/2008 - 8:24am | login or register to post comments

Col Solare

Make that $6.95 milliion, if you include the $0.95 million that the county spent building a road to the doorstep of the winery, which is not open to the public who paid for the road.

Years ago, a coworker would jokingly refer to West Richland as "Little Italy," in reference to the > $200,000 homes on the hillsides looking over the < $20,000 homes in the flood plain. It turns out that my coworker was prophetic. (I know, the winery technically is in Benton City, but that's even funnier.)

By andyplymale at Tue, 02/19/2008 - 7:09am | login or register to post comments

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