1st TCA bottle

So, i popped open a bottle i had purchased from winebid, actually i have two. And there is no doubt in my mind that it is corked. I have had plenty of cooked bottles but this is my first corked bottle. I could tell the moment i smelled the cork that something was off. Then i poured and knew it. It isnt way over powering but its there. I left the glass sit and breath and took a sniff. Very corky smell. Tasted it again, and it tasted of cork but i could still get flavor from the wine.

I went online and some site said to pour the wine into a measuring cup with some polyethelene food wrap. In a few minutes remove the wrap and it should remove the tca. Anybody ever heard of this or try it. I think i will give it a shot tonight even though i have written off the bottle.

Anybody think my other bottle will not be corked?

It’s impossible to know, but I recently had an older (2005 Bordeaux), where several of the wines exhibited that wet cardboard taste.

Ps
Obama did it.

Uh…, i fail to see how that is possible.

[resizeableimage=653,367]http://i.imgur.com/fWSHCVJ.gif%3F1[/resizeableimage]

So I did it. My results are a little mixed because I did wait about 20 hours and I think that it worked but I’m not positive. It did work on the nose though. No taint smell like yesterday. For some reason the wine is a bit more tannic then it was yesterday. Is that possible?

Well, the nose has no real noticeable cork smell but it is definately back in the wine.

Interesting experiment!

I’m waiting for my next corked bottle.

I’m also going to try the ‘few drops of half and half’ into the bottle, then filter trick and see what up.

I saw this at Wines & Vines online…

One seemingly old-fashioned but time-tested method to remove TCA is fining the affected wine with half and half. Unlike milk fining to remove tannin, in which the milk’s casein is the agent of change, here the butterfat is what grabs the TCA. Any milk product will settle down to the bottom of a tank pretty quickly, and is followed by filtration. This may sound like a home remedy, but Bryan Tudhope of VA Filtration, which uses a very different technology, says that potential customers sometimes find the half and half approach is more cost effective for very large batches of 50,000 to 100,000 gallons of wine.

Maybe 2-3 drops in a bottle and I will see what happens.

I’ve tried that before with less than stellar results. The wine was still undrinkable.

Crud.

I completely did not understand the half and half trick. But i think the plastic wrap sort of works but you need to drink the wine quickly. Maybe if i had let it sit longer?

Joe, the saran wrap trick is legit, but it can only help so much. In general, I think once you have a corked bottle, there is no saving it. It’s part of the risk of buying wine, you just have to factor that in to your expectations. Just like there are other flaws and closure failures, bad winemaking, etc., all which can end in a less than pleasurable bottle. Unfortunately, wine (at least not the finer wines we talk about here) is not like processed orange juice, where you can get a perfect carton every time.

As for your observation about being more tannic the next day, I think that’s normal. A lot of wines, particularly younger, tannic wines, will show the tannins more after some air time.

I’m confused a bit. Will all the half and half get curd like from the acids and filter out? A few drops doesn’t seem like enough for a whole bottle.

I haven’t found any method to really “fix” a corked wine. I have tried all of the above. The Saran Wrap method takes out some, but not all TCA, and leaves a stripped wine, IMO. Frankly, I just punt and if a recent purchase, return it. If a wine-bid purchase, lick my wounds and count my losses.

You will have many more as long as corks are around. My percentage is 1/70- 1/100 bottles so 1-1.4%. I have never found a way to reliably save them but I do have a vinegar crock that is good use of the wine. To me, they lose any fruit in the nose and taste and smell of wet cardboard. Cork, itself has no smell or it wouldn’t be used.