Okay good. I thought I was just being overly upset that my 87 Mondavi Reserve was a bad bottle. What can ya do.
So if I go to my garage and pick up a soggy piece of cardboard and smell it, I should have a good clue?
Try to find a bag of baby carrots. You will find one or two for sure that smell and taste like chlorine and wet cardboard. That’s a pretty good example of TCA.
I’m fairly certain that I have a pretty high TCA threshold. I’ve always considered that a major advantage to my physiology. Less bad bottles. It doesn’t mean I’m any less sensitive to other flavors and nuances, just that I’m nearly immune to TCA.
On the other hand, even I’ve had to chuck a bottle or two. Some of them are way over nearly everybody’s detection threshold.
So is TCA only a smell thing? Will the wine taste fine?
There’s no such thing as a little corked. If it’s corked, pour it down the drain.
Sometimes undetectable levels of TCA will strip a wine of its fruit, just leaving a blah, insipid taste.
It definitely is the classic descriptor.
But as a learning aide, I’m not sure — if you just wet cardboard it doesn’t have a smell, right? It is when it turns mildewy and gross that it develops that particular TCA aroma.
I think wet, mildewy clothes are something we’ve all smelt that seem a better learning aide, but whatever works for the OP.
For me, this is the most common form of TCA, sadly. Rarely do I have a bottle that reeks of wet cardboard (or whatever), but low-level TCA that robs the wine of any aroma or life is not uncommon.
Exactly!
The “wet cardboard” descriptor is a little misleading, in that just getting some cardboard wet and letting it sit for a while won’t cause it to smell like TCA. Nor does TCA smell like chlorine (chlorine smells like chlorine).
TCA, like every other chemical, has its own unique smell. The only way to learn it is to smell it, and the best way to do that is to find a super corked bottle. You will also find “corked” things in nature or food (packaged carrots has been mentioned, and that can happen, but it’s actually fairly rare); shredded bark used in gardens, in wet weather can become mold infected and generate TCA.
Really, trying to describe what TCA smells like is a fools errand, just like trying to describe what chocolate tastes like, or what coconut smells like, or any other distinctive aroma/taste. Find a real example, and then you’ll know - forever.
I didn’t realize I had smelled TCA lots of times until someone who definitively knew told me “this is TCA”. Once I had confirmed it I realized I had sensed it dozens upon dozens of times but was never sure. I think the “wet mildew cardboard” smell description never seemed to get me there, and I was never SURE sure until it was confirmed by someone else. I think how TCA strips the wine of flavor is more telling for me, there’s kind of this indescribable metallic tang of something being “off” and the fruit is just buried or gone.
I went for more than 2 years without a corked bottle and started to think I just could not ID TCA anymore. I opened a Myriad Syrah a couple of weeks ago that was extreme. To their credit they replaced it right away.
What exactly is the process for getting it replaced? Does the winery just take your word for it?
I have more experience with wet cardboard than with mildewed clothes. I think you should switch laundries.
I just emailed them and they were immediately responsive.
Muted fruit.
I think a key point is that it seems that peoples’ sensitivity to TCA is quite variable. For those who are less sensitive, a
dead
wine, or lack of fruit is probably a good surrogate.
And yes wet wool or cardboard or mildew rather than “wet dog”.
No. It’s also a tasty thing.
I’m very sensitive to TCA, which sucks. In some rare cases of very low level TCA, where I wasn’t sure or not when I smelled it, I can taste it when I try the wine. It tastes as just like it smells, wet cardboard.
Karma. I just opened a corked wine tonight.