Boxes that smell corked

Why is it that some boxes smell corked? I get that it can be a cardboard smell. But sometimes wood boxes smell that way too. I know it can’t transfer because it isn’t in contact with the wine.

From Wiki…

2,4,6-Trichloroanisole (TCA) is a chemical compound that is a chlorinated derivative of anisole. TCA is a fungal metabolite of 2,4,6-trichlorophenol, which is used as a fungicide. It can be found in minute traces on packaging materials stored in the presence of fiberboard treated with trichlorophenol.


TCA is usually produced when naturally occurring airborne fungi and bacteria (usually Aspergillus sp., Penicillium sp., Actinomycetes, Botrytis cinerea, Rhizobium sp., or Streptomyces) are presented with chlorinated phenolic compounds, which they then convert into chlorinated anisole derivatives. The chlorophenols can originate from various contaminants such as those found in some pesticides and wood preservatives. Chlorophenols can also be a product of the chlorine bleaching process used to sterilize or bleach wood, paper, and other materials; they can be synthesized by reaction of hypochlorites with lignin. They can also migrate from other objects such as shipping pallets treated by chlorophenols.

1 Like

Paper, boxes, Wood, carrots, and I’ve had faucets and toilets that were corked. Exposure to Bleach would be the common thread.

Could it transfer to cork and then the wine?

I’ve seen it countless times working in retail. I have opened many bottles from boxes that reeked of TCA, some so badly that I had to get them out of the building right away, and the wines have never been corked (or at least so rarely that it was a normal rate of occurrence). For some reason, it seems more common with wines coming from South America.

If any of you ever lived or passed through a town with a papermill, you will forever have the “corked” smell in your head. It is not easily forgotten.

Try living in a town that had a cork mill, like my grandparents and father did. Nasty beyond nasty.

I’ve had that smell in plastic bags from grocery stores, cardboard boxes, and a number of other things. It’s nasty.

It won’t get into the wine, but it sure can migrate (as the wiki notes). Get rid of the contaminated material. Imagine taking a bottle to a restaurant and noticing that awful smell coming from the bottle…and your hand from touching the bottle. Imagine all the bottles in your cellar having this external contamination.

Almost as bad as the garlic type smell you get from Champagne foil. Has anyone else noticed this?

My SO is from a city that sits next to a huge paper mill and you have to drive past it to get to the city. I don’t know if they do something differently there in the States, but while the smell is quite nasty for sure, I think it has nothing to do with TCA whatsoever. A completely different kind of stench.

To me it has that same wet cardboard stench.

I don’t know if it has something to do with what kind of paper material they produce or what, but the stench is nothing like that. The reek that floats around there is quite flatulent / sulfurous to my nose. I’d associate it with heavy reduction / mercaptans in wine, not TCA by a long shot.

Pulp mills produce hydrogen sulfide, mercaptans and other “fragrant” chemicals.

I remember that Bellingham, Wash. had a characteristic stench when I was a kid. British Columbia mill towns reeked of the same thing. At some point, the air improved, probably due to environmental regulation.

It’s been decades since I’ve been in a mill town, so I don’t know if they now smell like TCA. Believe me, that would be vast improvement over H2S.

Yes, been there, smelt that! 30 years ago I used to run a campsite in Les Landes, the area south of Bordeaux, where there are numerous pulp/paper factories which make cellulose pulp from pine trees, one being just a few miles inland. Most days, the smell was kept away by predominantly west winds from the ocean, but on hot days, with an east wind…the smell arrived in the morning and hung around in the trees. It was appalling, a mix of sulphur and cabbage - the guests were convinced it was poisonous. I went back last September for a wedding - and discovered nothing had changed: same old delicious smell.

I drove through International Falls MN and Fort Frances ON many years ago. Both had paper mills and the mercaptan smell of rotten eggs/rotten cabbage was quite disgusting. It was very distinct from TCA. I was just passing through and maybe the smell was different during different stages of processing.

Anyway, to the OP X I agree with the others who’ve said the TCA won’t get into your bottles but you still don’t want the smell in the cellar. Throw away the boxes and wipe down any stinky bottles, but don’t worry about the wine.

As one more data point, as a child we drove past a paper mill near Rome, GA at least 15 to 20 times a year on the way to my grandmother’s house and the reek was definitely of sulfur and its mercaptan derivatives.

I drive by paper/pulp plants every trip to walla walla, and used to smell them in everett and tacoma. If I had to compare to a wine flaw it would be reduced/reducted or brett, not corked.

Corked carrots bug the heck out of me though.

I find baby carrots, by dint of their manufacturing process, to be so reliably contaminated with TCA that “baby carrots” is the first descriptor I use when explaining corked wines to neophytes.

[winner.gif]