Opus One suing barrel supplier over TCA contamination

I thought this was interesting. Any thoughts? I wonder how it will play out.

Saw this and was going to post as well. This happens from time to time, but usually it happens with older barrels - had it happen a handful of times at another winery I worked at with 10+ year old barrels.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this - I’m sure that the barrel manufacturer will fight this.

Cheers.

“The barrels were certified to be TCA-free for three years, according to the court filing.”

Seems pretty cut and dry to me, in this case.

to put on my lawyer hat for a minute:
if you dine at a restaurant and get sick, you generally have a case. however, an important factor is always whether other people got sick who also dined at the same restaurant contemporaneous to you.
relative to this case, it would seem to be important to find out whether or not a buyer of the same lot of barrels also got tca.

They will definitely get a refund on the barrels. Beyond that depends on how the sales contract is written, and how much the barrel maker values future relationships.

I guess the defining factor for me in this case is they made the guarantee on TCA free. If you guaranteed your restaurant patrons wouldn’t get sick, and they did, how would your case fare? Would you refund the meal or would you be liable for damages as well?

They were Fouquet.

Sounds like they have a legitimate claim. Defense might be that the TCA came from elsewhere. The story says an employee detected TCA smell and samples were sent to a lab. Presumably all this happened and the samples were taken after there was wine in the barrels. They presumably wouldn’t put wine into barrels that smelled of TCA until they did some testing. Still, claiming that the TCA came from elsewhere sounds like a losing argument.

the guarantee would still likely need opus to prove tca came from barrel. the guarantee doesn’t cover any wine from being tca free which was in the barrel, it only says the barrels were tca free. the onus is on opus to prove the source of the tca came solely and directly from the barrel.
this would be achieved by showing that they use several coopers in-house (they do) and showing none of those lots got tca. this would be quite effective as everything would likely be the same in this setup (grape source, labor pool, equipment, technique) except for the barrel itself.

are there restaurants that don’t guarantee that?? I guess I’ve never seen it expressly written but yikes. haha!

“Consuming raw or undercooked meats, poultry, seafood, shellfish, or eggs may increase your risk of foodborne illness.”

In the US all restaurants use this disclaimer on their menu to reduce liability.

Product defect = strict liability. If they can prove the barrels were contaminated, and barring any contractual insulation…

Matt: I think that restaurant disclaimer is a statutory requirement. It does nothing to reduce liability. Liability is a jury decision.

Not entirely. The barrels come over on containers, then loaded onto trucks. It is not uncommon for the flooring to be made of wood, wood that is contaminated with TCA? Possibly. The same cellar hand that rolls the barrels into place usually is the same one who fills and maintains the barrels. If, big if, the TCA is picked up on the outside of the barrels through transportation then is plausible that the TCA did not come from inside the barrel, but made its way into the wine through cellar contact.

Insert liquidated damages joke here.

Does a high end winery like Opus not test all new barrels before using them? I would think, given the value of wine in a barrel, that should be a no-brainer.

I’ve found new barrels have a higher risk of TCA than used barrels. This is not terribly uncommon.

To me, Opus is gonna win. There were 150 barrels delivered by the cooper and 10 of them had TCA? Good luck with the cooper convincing anyone that it happened elsewhere or at the winery or it would have affected other coopers as well. TCA inside the barrel would not be affected by being in a shipping container, most likely.

The killer for the cooper is their “guarantee.” They made the guarantee and that will be the part that sinks them.

My issue with all this is that it is Opus we are talking about and the cooperage is a smaller one. I’ve never heard of their barrels being used in Napa Cab before. Opus would not have DARED to this to Taransaud or Sylvain because they would lose access at all their global properties. But for a small cooper they can leverage them.

Let’s be frank… Opus makes 30,000+ cases. That means 1200 barrels. Of those, 10 were defective. That would be like having one bad barrel in a winery of 120 barrels in a 3000 case winery. Or like me having 6 bad gallons out of my 12 barrels. I bleed off 10x that down the drain every year for my saignee, alone.

So one small cooper has TCA and it affects a tiny portion of your wine and you have 70% margins? Drop the cooper and move on. But to use a blunt instrument like a lawsuit and publicity to crush them seems like bullying to me. Given their wine has immense profit margins few wineries can dream of, they can afford to be more gracious that this.

This is like someone who owns a mansion suing a plumber for leaving a dirt smudge on their marble floor that required an employee 15 minutes of work to clean up.

What if the TCA contamination is from the winery?

Thanks for the perspective Roy. Really enjoyed reading that.

+1. Really interesting perspective, Ray, and greatly appreciated.

Roy,

My guess is that they probably approached the Barrel manufacturer about making right somehow and the company did not agree. Lots of speculation here.