Opened a 2013 Dariush II and this is what the cork looked like. I found it odd. Then, tasted the wine before decanting and it tasted corked. Had wife taste it (without telling her my suspicion). She thought it tasted really off. So then I opened different bottle that I know what it should taste like, to make sure my taste buds weren’t off - they were spot on. Then Coravin’ed another 2013 Dariush II and it tasted similar.
All Dariush bottles were purchased from winery allocation and have been stored in my 55 degree cellar. Wondering what the chances are that I have 2 bad bottles in a row…
Those crystals don’t have anything to with TCA, although I tend to see them more with whites that were kept at cooler temps, and sometimes old dessert wines.
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I had a 2013 Darioush Cab Franc the other day - and although not corked - its not my cup of tea.
Years ago, (1979), I bought a case of Cab from a local winery. Four bottles in the case were corked. When I took them back, they acknowledged they had a problem they working on and replaced the four bottles with five. From what I could see in and out of the winery, it appeared they were power washing all equipment as part of addressing the problem.
Agree. No seepage. As I suggested revisit on day 2. I have actually had wines I thought were corked on day 1 and on day 2 very drinkable. However if I think it is corked on day 1 it is significantly more noticeable on day 2. Contact the winery and they should send you replacements.
This was the case. The wine was terrible the first few hours, but slowly began to turn after about 3 or 4 hours. I had a bottle of this same wine at a restaurant about a year ago, which had only a 10 minute decant and everyone thought the wine was great. Odd that two bottles were so different…
[quotez_hart wrote: ↑
Mon Jul 29, 2019 12:34 pm
John Glas wrote: ↑
Sun Jul 28, 2019 6:32 pm
Cork is fine. I would call it pristine.
Agree. No seepage. As I suggested revisit on day 2. I have actually had wines I thought were corked on day 1 and on day 2 very drinkable. However if I think it is corked on day 1 it is significantly more noticeable on day 2. Contact the winery and they should send you replacements.
This was the case. The wine was terrible the first few hours, but slowly began to turn after about 3 or 4 hours. I had a bottle of this same wine at a restaurant about a year ago, which had only a 10 minute decant and everyone thought the wine was great. Odd that two bottles were so different…
good to see the bottle finally came around. Always a disappointment when you wait to drink something and it’s spoiled.][/quote]
Yes never give up on a bottle. The opposite happens for me occasionally when I preview a bottle for an event and it is in good shape but later falls apart.
The physical condition of the cork has nothing to do with whether or not the wine will be corked. Storage conditions aren’t really a factor either. Getting two in a row is unusual, but does happen. Some wines have batch-wide cork issues and then it becomes a more common occurrence. As others have pointed out, if in doubt, pour some into a glass and let it sit. Cork taint will amplify with time open. Other issues may resolve with air.
Long ago, I had a 4 out of 6 bottles of 1988 Altesino Brunello Montosoli that were corked. That was a batch issue, methinks. I was so bummed. The two good ones were really nice wines.
Agree, but I also suspect the quality of corks from the same case of wine is slightly correlated, as the corks will probably come from the same batch.
So if you have one corked bottle the chances of your second bottle being corked is increased (compared with another bottle randomly selected from the whole production run).
I understand that during the cork manufacturing process they go to great lengths to randomize (mix) corks specifically to avoid having entire “batches” of corks that are off (resulting in significant liability exposure from any one producer who might find an entire vintage of wine destroyed or significantly impacted). That said, it does occasionally happen that you get a run of corked bottles from a single producer (or single case). In addition to a bad “batch” of corks, there is also the possibility of cork taint occurring after the corks are distributed (for example, if the corks are washed at the winery) or possibly even occurring within the wine itself (without having anything to do with the cork), for example, as a result of TCA taint in barrels.
I thought some producers checked batches by taking random samples from them, which implies that some may be good and some bad. But maybe that is another reason cork manufacturers now “mix thing up” - to avoid getting caught by the testing.
Power washing cannot “address” a TCA problem. Quite the contrary, actually. Especially back then, when it wasn’t normal to run the municipal water through filtration to remove chlorine, choramine and other stuff.
I’m glad it worked out for you in the end. I opened a bottle of 2016 Domaine Brusset Gigondas to taste the vintage hype and it was corked. Day 2 was the same with the wet cardboard/band-aid smell andhardly any flavor in the palate. I’m hoping my 2nd bottle of it in my cellar isnt corked too.
Thanks for all the replies. I’m going to chalk this up to bottle variation (since we had a bottle of this exact same wine a year ago) and this particular bottle just needed a lot longer to come around. We had a 2014 Darius II about a month ago and it was great right out of the bottle. We’re going to open a 2008 Darius II this weekend, in the spirit of continuing education
This is a great, easy way to remember/decipher/differentiate between TCA and brett. Thanks for the tip.
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