Tasted a slightly oxidized '99 Rheingau tonight that made me think of this.
Have seen on occasion a comment like “hint of oxidation that blew off after a few minutes.” or some such.
This is not what is happening. Oxidation is a permanent chemical change in the wine. Occasionally a wine will have a small amount of oxidation & other aspects of the wine will open, intensify, & seemingly cover the oxidation. The oxidized aspect of the wine is still there, merely hidden.
Same for TCA. Doesn’t blow off, either. This usually becomes More noticeable with air.
OK - didn’t want to make a big deal about this - just to comment.
Absolutely right, once you pop a bottle it is only going to get more oxidised not less so; the changes are permanent. TCA will also remain in the wine, unless you stick a polythene bag in your bottle and leave it over night. Through the mystic processes of chemical reactions the polythene bag can neutralise TCA. I hardly ever do this but I have friends who swear by this technique.
Hmm… But what could the Saranwrap leave in the wine? After all, you’re putting it in an acid environment, etc., and something nasty might dissolve into the wine.
I’ve done the saran wrap thing in a decanter. It will remove the aromas of TCA almost instantly. This is remarkable. Unfortunately, the remaining wine has been void of flavor and aromatics. I’m not sure if the TCA has damaged the wine or the process using the saran wrap has altered the wine’s chemistry. Nontheless, if the TCA demons visit, I don’t bother using any hocus pocus.
Varying times from about 30 minutes to overnight with similar results. Again, I as well as others with me at the time, were impressed at the speed with which the TCA odors were gone. The remaining wine was just not very good. We also did this with different wines: CA Pinot, Red Burg, Bordeaux and Barolo. All reacted the same way.
I have never done the saran wrap to any of the TCA wines I’ve experienced, though I was at a tasting where it was done - and left in the decanter for just about a minute. The TCA was heavily reduced - but so were all other aromatics in the wine . . . .
Side note - when I was in school at UC Davis, we took a field trip to Gallo of Sonoma’s facility. While up on a high catwalk outside, I looked down and saw what looked like boxes and boxes of ice - turned out they were pea-sized pieces of polyehtylene . . . it had just been reported by WS, and confirmed by the winery, that they had a systemic TCA issue not related to corks, and they were removing traces of it by sending all wines through these pea-sized pieces . . .
Years ago someone on the ebob board was in real product development of a product that used the poly thing to remove TCA. There were a couple of serious chemists on the thread and it turns out tha TCA will, in fact, adhere to a certain kind of polyethlene. it’s specific, so not just any poly wrap will do (they’re not all the same). He pointed out that you need either a LOT of surface area or it needs to spend a fair bit of time on contact with the wine. He was trying to take the surface area approach and get it made to work like a chracoal filter does, very tightly packed so that a lot of area fit into a small volume. Didn’t get past the prototype stage I think - the guy’s main biz was, if i recall correctly, industrial filtering so it might have been a time vs reward issue.
Well the ‘devoid of any aromas’ thing is the signature of low level TCA too. So you might have removed enough TCA to lose the overt smell of it, but not enough to remove the suppression of flavors. It’s also not just any wrap that will work - it’s a pretty particular formulation IIRC.
I know the guy you are talking about, but haven’t heard anything from him in years. Loren and I were wondering recently what had happened to him.
Saran Wrap (original formulation) was different than the other wraps. That formulation was removed from the market ~2004. The newer version is a poly-ethylene like some of the others. No idea if that makes a difference as I don’t remember exactly what the interaction is that would bind TCA.
Me either and I can’t remember the guy’s name or i’d look him up. The wrap thing is funny - I was watching a America’s Test Kitchen episode a few weeks ago and they compared the effects of various wraps in general. Some are forumlated to keep food fresher, longer, others for high grip on the vessel to prevent spills, etc. No idea on what this means for the TCA issue, but there’s a lot of thought behind the various wraps.
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