After opening hundreds of bottles of Champagne, I can only remember maybe 2 or 3 being corked. This can’t be by coincidence. Any thought as to why Champagne is rarely corked?
I’ve had enough corked champagne to not even dream it was a question.
Yeah, I’m with you. I think there have been a few threads on this in the past tho. I havent had many corked sparking wines at all. We drink alot of sparking wine and not many have been corked. The last one I can remember is a crappy prosecco someone brought to a work function like a year ago.
Having said that I’ve had a few ones that have been muted or had bottle variation. Pssibly low levels of TCA, but I am pretty TCA sensitive and I didnt notice anything.
I feel like I get a significantly lower incidence of corked white wines generally, including sparkling wines. No idea if that’s true or, if so, why it might be.
I’m not sure I’ve ever had a corked sparkling wine.
I wonder if low-level TCA is harder to detect in sparkling wine.
If the premise is correct, perhaps it has to do with the composite corks.
According to Cellartracker, I’ve consumed 312 sparkling wines since 2014 (of which about half were Champagne). Not a huge sample, but still, none have been corked so far.
I have had a few happen. You know it instantly, just no gas release, no feeling of pressure. Hope you still might be ok and then you taste it and its nearly flat and it just sucks. Its a shame. Last happened to me on a Larmandier Longitude. Also happened to me on a Vouette Fidele but it was like 2hrs after I bought it from the store so I brought it back and they actually replaced the bottle for me (after some griping telling me thats how the wine was supposed to taste).
In my young wine hobby and experience, I would agree that champagne has a lower corkage rate in compared to still. Been present for quite a few corked still wines that are always a bummer.
You have now taken the jinx from me.
I once asked about corked whites and mentioned that I could not recall the last corked white wine I opened.
Then, three in the next month, and intermittently since.
Thank you for taking the mantle.
I am free!
Still wines tend to spend time with the wine in contact with the cork - they’re often palletized neck-down at bottling. Sparkling wines would be cased neck-up and remain that way through distribution and retail/restaurant. If they haven’t gone into storage on their side, they may never have had the wine touch the cork. Basically, the incidence rate on current release sparkling wines should be near zero. Maybe Barry can answer if his bad experiences are mostly cellared bottles.
Here the wine isn’t corked, you’ve just had a Champagne with a poor cork, letting the CO2 escape (most likely resulting in oxidation of the Champagne). That’s a completely different thing. Corked Champagne can open with a big pop and have all the bubbles left.
If a wine is “corked”, it means it is faulty because it has TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) either from the cork or from the aging vessels, rendering the wine’s aroma and taste musty and very disagreeable.
And I’ve had enough corked Champagnes to know they aren’t that rarely corked. However, their incidence seems to be lower. I guess it might have to do with the fact that the part that is in contact with the wine has a small disk of solid, high-quality cork that most likely won’t contain any TCA - I guess the risk would be higher with the agglomerated corks.
To add to that, have people noticed less Port being corked than table wines?
I find sparkling wines closed with the classic Champagne cork corked at about the normal rate. I much prefer the Mytik cork, which is Diam for sparkling wines.
I have had corked port. It is unpleasant. A rare occurrence for me considering how rarely I get to drink port.
The few bottles of corked champagne I have had have been very dramatically corked- there was no missing it.
It is possible that champagne does a better job of masking lower levels of TCA.
As a percentage I open far less champagne than red/white wine so it is possible the percentage of corked is similar, but it just SEEMS like less.
Of course if we aren’t careful here, we will resurrect that old debate of whether there are degrees of corkiness and wines can be mildly corked (TLDR there is contingent that believes there is only a binary corked or not- where others believe in degrees of corkiness. Both sides equally pedantic and defiant, whereas both sides are technically correct.)
I think some of this has to do with temperature as well - aromatics are volatile and the colder a wine is - be it white or sparkling - the less ‘evident’ that TCA will be. I have been told of many instances where someone thought a sparkling was ‘okay’ only to have it warm up and realize it was corked.
The fact that the bottle is not stored upside down is an interesting premise, but the cork companies have been mentioning that it might be okay to store wine ‘standing up’ because there is enough pressure in the headspace to keep a wine fresh - and I would believe that would also allow for ‘transference’ of TCA from the cork. Just a thought . . .
Cheers.
Nope. If anything, the carbonation tends to make TCA way more noticeable.
Having worked quite many years at different wine shops, where we were required to check what fault the wine a customer returns is suffering from, sparkling wines were often the most obvious ones. And with that many years of experience, one learns to recognize different faults pretty quickly.
This thread calls to mind a post from Brad Baker, which I replied to, in Frank Murray’s thread where he was disappointed that a Champagne grower wouldn’t respond to him about a flawed bottle. I don’t think Brad or anyone responded to my question.
https://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2639061#p2639061
Brad Baker wrote: ↑Sun Dec 23, 2018 10:43 am
Also, you should know that there is a common scam throughout Champagne where people ask for free bottles claiming they have corked/damaged/affected bottles. They often contact houses/growers directly and claim that they can’t get their retailers to take care of them and demand replacements. The Champenois actually have a list they share of folks who are known to do this type of stuff. I know this sucks for you, but because of this common scam and non-stop requests for free bottles (especially of higher end bottles like yours), it is going to be tough to get attention. Your request, while legitimate, is a needle in a haystack.
Chris Seiber wrote:Wow, I’ve never heard of anything like this. Obviously, Brad is an impeccable source of information from Champagne, so I’m not doubting his report in the least, but this kind of blows my mind.
Is this scam common in Burgundy, Bordeaux, Italy, California or anywhere else? If not, can anyone think of why it would just be happening in Champagne?
The TCA guru at ETS Labs told me that the threshold is typically lower for sparkling wines (the wine in question was a Moscato d’Asti with an agglomerated cork).
Separately, it may be that yeast autolysis aromas and flavors somehow slightly mask TCA; at least it sometimes seems that way to me.
It’s my understanding too that TCA can transfer through a headspace.
Lots of Champagne boxes, most of them I think, have the bottles lying down for more efficient packing of the fatter bottles.
-Al
A weird example, since Moscato d’Asti sees no yeast autolysis whatsoever. Neither do many other styles of sparkling wine. And conversely, there are numerous styles of white wine that see significant amount of autolysis.