I have had a pretty good run of bottles without any signs of being corked. But last night I had a terribly corked 2003 Robert Biale Royal Punishers Petit Sirah. Before that, my last corked example was a 2005 Outpost PS. Got me to thinking…obviously anectdotal here…do certain grapes exhibit or amplify cork taint more than others? I know…at least I think I do…that the grape varietal itself doesn’t predispose the bottle to taint.
Interesting - I would assume that cork taint is purely cork-based, something that only the cork itself has any factor on, but perhaps you are right. Maybe sugar or alcohol content can either accelerate or retard the actual process.
At UGC, the only corked bottles I sampled were both Sauternes.
I’m hip that the taint itself if from the cork. I was wondering if people experienced a different threshold based on the varietal. As much wine as we drink, Kristi and I should run into more than two corked bottles in a year.
I have found more German Riesling bottles that were corked than any other type of wine … Bordeaux running a close second.
OTOH, although I have had PLENTY of bottles of corked Ports (mostly Vintage) … I have never had a corked bottle of Madeira and only met one person EVER, who has … Mr. D’Oliveiras mentioned he had one some years ago. So it is not an RS thing or a high alc or acidity dynamic either.
From what I’ve read there are different thresholds for sensitivity for each person. When they analyze for it they know for instance that at a certain level most all people won’t detect it and it can acceptable. I’m sure at the margins maybe some varieties or styles of wine may hold it in better but I would think that is only the extremely low levels. At some point its just corked regardless of what the juice was made from.
I would say, I went through a period where I saw a lot of corked Italian wines - Barolo, Barbaresco, etc. I also went through a period where I saw a lot of corked Spanish wines. In both cases, the percentages seemed much higher compared to CA wines and French wines.
The cork taint was not varietally premdominant…mostly geographic.
I took care of the Spanish problem by not really drinking Spanish wines, except Albarino, any more. Italy seems to have gone back to normal for me so maybe it was just a bad run.
I had 3 corked bottles during 08.
06 Sea Smoke Southing Pinot
06 August West Chard
06 Kanzler Vineyards Pinot
So in my experience, the 2006 vintage was corked. ![[dance2.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a6ccdc94a15acd80c66296c39ad7b68296214956.gif "dance2"){kind=small}
Sauvignon blanc.
At least, back when most people didn’t use screwcaps or nomacorcs.
Brings up an interesting thought…I wonder if a particular region was getting there corks from one major supplier. If that one supplier had some issues in their production facility I could see it impacting a whole lot of corks and different wineries that buy from them. Having been to a major cork producer in Portugal to see how they were made, I could easily see that happening. They are processing thousands and thousands on the same machine without cleaning between. Not to mention all the cork dust in the air.
Bill Landreth:
Kristi and I should run into more than two corked bottles in a year.
We run well below the accepted 5-10% statistic. That even includes the 4-5 bottles a week I open for in store tasting at work. I think my sensitivity is pretty high, so I don’t believe it’s getting past me.
That being said, there is no varietal which is pre-disposed to show taint for me.
This post makes me want screwtops. It’s like hotdog meat. I don’t want to know how it’s made, I just want to enjoy the end result.