Help me identify this wine defect

I’ve never been able to identify a corked wine from the well known descriptions - wet cardboard, off smells. But, occasionally I get a wine that just tastes off. Sometimes it is a wine that I’ve owned other bottles, and I know there is a difference in the quality, sometimes I know it is just off.

The other night I dined with my family at a local French restaurant, and ordered a bottle of cru bordeaux, Château Tournefeuille Lalande de Pomerol 2009. I was finishing a cocktail so the waiter did not ask me to taste the bottle when he opened it. He poured for all of us, and I took a few sips, and initially thought this just needs a little air. After a while, I tried again, and thought it off. By off I mean very little aroma, subdued taste, no acidity, just kind of dead. I asked my daughter what she thought, and she said it tasted “muted”.

I called the waiter over, told him I didn’t know if it was corked, but just thought it off. He called over the manager, who poured himself a glass, took a whiff, and said “there’s nothing there. This wines normally presents a very nice bouquet, but there is definitely something wrong here.” He didn’t taste it.

He asked if we wanted another bottle of the same wine, which we did. From the first, the wine came over differently, and better. There was a bouquet, and some acidity in the taste. It definitely would have benefited from some more age or air, but it tasted “alive” where the previous was dead.

Was this wine corked, or is this muted, dead, lifeless description an indication of something else? I would also point out when I’ve noticed this occasionally from wines in my cellar, it occurred in wines where I had bought multiple bottles from the winery, in recent vintages. So, some bottle variation, but I don’t think the “bad” bottles had been exposed to anything different (heat for example) than the bottles that showed well.

What do you think?

Sounds like it was corked.

Yes. And good service there.

TCA is picked up by different people in different ways. Some are hypersensitive and really get the wet cardboard and all that. Others can just as strongly notice that all the good stuff is muted/reduced/dead.

That’s a great description of a slightly corked bottle, and how nice that the restaurant responded as they did.

+1

+1 on what others have said. I’ve had similar experience with a couple of bottles that did not have the overt corked nose, but the wine was muted or dead exactly as you describe. Very often, the only way to be certain is to have recent experience with the same wine. What excellent service from the restaurant!

Yes, probably corked. TCA exists on a long, long spectrum from an insipid, dusty wine (that you know should be lively and flavorful) to mouse fur and aluminum. TCA, as you know, is often described as wet cardboard (although it can get much worse). So just imagine if someone laid wet paper towels over your wine, or filtered it through a dog blanket, how it would affect the character. You would get a tasteless, lifeless wine.

Kudos to you for speaking up, and to the restaurant for handling it wisely and graciously.

Corked, maybe? But I’ve never really subscribed to the idea that below sensory threshold corked wine can be altered so much that it completely destroys the taste. I’ve tasted many, many obviously corked wines, and you can usually get a pretty good sense of the underlying material, even though it is perturbed by the smell and taste of TCA. So the notion that a wine could be so masked by sub-threshold TCA seems a little suspect to me. I don’t know what else to suggest, but I have experienced wines like JC describes as well, and never really knew what caused it.

We recently had a totally lifeless bottle of a near-legendary domestic Syrah. Just nothing there. Happens, and I usually guess low-level TCA but never really know.

Agree!

I think it’s generally accepted that TCA can be perceptible, but not identifiable, and that wines with low levels of TCA tend to be ‘scalped’ precisely in the way the OP mentioned. It certainly happens to me all the time; I taste a wine at a trade event looking for TCA, don’t find it, but come back to the bottle later and realize the wine is different from the other bottles.

Oliver, I’m not saying TCA isn’t a possible cause in this particular case. But I’m wondering why, when a bottle is obviously TCA contaminated, I can often taste the wine and perceive close to what I would expect from that wine (peering through the TCA veil). I’ve also had wines similar to what is described here, where the flavor is just gone, that aren’t corked. I’ve always been at a loss to know what is the cause of that problem, and it kind of sounds like this might be one of those cases.

Having said that, since JC says up front he is not certain of the aroma of TCA, there’s a lot of uncertainty about this particular wine - it might very well be TCA caused.

I agree with Alan on this, nearly all corked bottles I have had you could at least discern the fruit and structure of the wine.
Now I’m curious if anyone has done tests to see how tca binds with different grapes or different oak and indeed can actually leave a wine dull and lifeless.

Personally I find it unusual that the fruit and structure is preserved in a corked wine. In the vast majority of the cases the wine is stripped, with flat or no nose. the fruit tends to have a fragile, short character that is recognizable, and in fact is the most common clue if the TCA isn’t obvious on the nose. An occasional potent wine will power thru this a bit, but never with what the original wine should taste like. Also TCA always gets more prominent with time, so often you will find if you go back to the bottle 2-3 hours later, the TCA that wasn’t obvious initially will become pretty recognizable.

Another subtle flaw is mild oxidation, which I’m becoming more and more aware of. But if the wine is oxidized there will be faint caramel/flat Coke notes on the finish.

I completely agree with Oliver.

Alan – Haven’t you had the experience of finding a wine that was just boring and only later you detected the TCA smell? That suggests that you can have the scalping effect without clear TCA aromas/flavors.

And, while I often can tell that there’s a good wine behind pretty conspicuous TCA, there are many other cases, contrary to your experience, where I’ve found the wine is just too tainted by TCA for me to assess it at all. So I don’t find the intensity of the TCA taint I perceive is necessarily correlated with its flattening effect.

Does anyone know if TCA has some chemical effect on other flavor compounds? Apart from its smell/taste acting as a mask, does it alter the flavor/aroma chemistry of wine?

John,
I’ve certainly had the experience of a wine that I or someone else suspected of having TCA, that only became obvious after more air time. I’m saying two things here: 1) I’ve had wines that lacked their normal flavor, but never showed obvious TCA. I do believe there are other faults that might cause this besides TCA, though I don’t know definitively what those are; 2) While I agree that overwhelming TCA can destroy any ability to properly sense a wine, I’ve had many wines that were lightly corked, but I nevertheless tasted, and even enjoyed through the TCA taint. And not just big, bold wines, though I agree those should stand up best.

To answer your last question, I’m pretty confident that TCA does not actually alter any wine chemistry. It only acts on your senses and perception of the wine’s aroma and flavors.

An aside: this is a thread that could really use input from experienced winemakers and researchers. Sadly, there are very few left who actively contribute here.

I don’t think we really disagree then.

Obviously, if you can’t smell TCA, you can’t be sure it’s the explanation for a boring wine in the absence of lab tests. It might be something else. But, if another bottle of the same wine does have flavor, I think that raises the odds that it’s TCA since many other flaws would be common to a barrel or a whole lot.

So BTW, what was the restaurant? Or did I miss it? Seems like they deserve to be named, no?

That’s good wine, and I would agree that it sounds like a mildly corked bottle. You did a good job sussing out something amiss.

And Please “out” the restaurant - I have a lot of friends on that side of the state where we talk friendly smack, so I’d love to let someone know they were doing right by their guests.