Can cork taint infect an entire cellar?

[Sc0tt_F_tzgerald]

I posted last week about a couple of Cakebread bottles I opened at home which were severely corked. I was opening a bottle of chateau montelena from the same cellar today and noticed a slight hint of corkiness on the nose after pouring. It got me to thinking…can taint spread throughout your cellar, wine cabinet, etc? Im hoping I’m overly paranoid but would appreciate the board’s thoughts.

[BobMilton]

Anything made of wood can pick up TCA. BUT, I’d think if your cellar was contaminated, you’d notice the smell while in your cellar without drinking any wine.

[TomHill]

@Scott Fitzgerald

I posted last week about a couple of Cakebread bottles I opened at home which were severely corked. I was opening a bottle of chateau montelena from the same cellar today and noticed a slight hint of corkiness on the nose after pouring. It got me to thinking…can taint spread throughout your cellar, wine cabinet, etc? Im hoping I’m overly paranoid but would appreciate the board’s thoughts.

Well, Scott…according to SteveEliot (http://www.cgcw.com/databaseshowitem.aspx?id=79978) bttld wine can pick
up TCA from TCA-infected wooden pallets. But in that case, the case-stacked goods are shrink-wrapped around the pallet.
That’s not the case in a wine cellar, obviously. But if TCA can penetrate the cork of a bttld wine (of that I’m a bit skeptical),
then I guess it could happen.
If you’ll ship me your entire cellar, I’ll carefully go thru each btl & let you know which ones are contaminated. Always willing
to help out a friend!!!
Tom

[Sc0tt_F_tzgerald]

Tom, you made me laugh. The funk I thought might be some bret finally blew off the montelena Zin I was drinking. Chalk it up to my paranoia!

[Nigel_Groundwater]

Wood is a good medium for the formation of TCA and other haloanisoles given the ready availability of relevant halogenated products [e.g. from common bleach to halophenols] and moulds in the environment [which can convert halophenols to their anisoles -TCA, TeCA, TBA etc] so these can be found in wooden structures like wine cellars, pallets, wooden cases, barrels etc as well as other diverse sources such as water supplies.

However research into whether TCA can penetrate a good cork in a soundly closed bottle has suggested that it doesn’t and those studies involved placing radioactively-tagged TCA directly onto the corks in already bottled wine of different ages and analysing the results over a 3 year period. IIRC the Australian Wine Research Institute conducted the first of such tests over a decade ago and they have since been repeated elsewhere with the same results.

[M_Hudson]

@Nigel Groundwater

Wood is a good medium for the formation of TCA and other haloanisoles given the ready availability of relevant halogenated products [e.g. from common bleach to halophenols] and moulds in the environment [which can convert halophenols to their anisoles -TCA, TeCA, TBA etc] so these can be found in wooden structures like wine cellars, pallets, wooden cases, barrels etc as well as other diverse sources such as water supplies.

However research into whether TCA can penetrate a good cork in a soundly closed bottle has suggested that it doesn’t and those studies involved placing radioactively-tagged TCA directly onto the corks in already bottled wine of different ages and analysing the results over a 3 year period. IIRC the Australian Wine Research Institute conducted the first of such tests over a decade ago and they have since been repeated elsewhere with the same results.

Its 6 am here and reading this just gave me a headache