Château Latour Pauillac de Latour 2014
I haven’t had a corked wine from this level of producer before. Very slight unmistakable TCA in the finish. Acid and tannins were great but definitely muted.
I had a corked Lafite last year (not a bottle I had brought to the dinner). I guess it can happen at any level.
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Yes, it can happen at any level: Ch.Margaux, Cheval blanc, Haut-Brion (blanc), LLas-Cases, Ausone, Palmer, DRC Richebourg, Montrachet Lafon, Ruchottes-Ch Mugneret-G, Bonneau Celestins, Rayas, Hermitage - many more
As soon as I ve dedected the TCA on the nose or palate it s undrinkable for me, usually its getting bitter and astringent in the finish
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To me, a corked wine is also undrinkable.
However, TCA doesn’t have any influence on bitterness or astringency. It just mutes fruit flavors and in high enough quantities can add that unmistakable, moldy mildew aroma and flavor of TCA.
However, if a corked wine tastes bitter and astringent, it means the wine was bitter and astringent to begin with - it being corked just might have removed the fruit flavors so that your attention turns to those flavors that still remain. In the case of red wines, it is usually acidity, bitterness, wood, evolved / oxidative tertiary aromas and tannic astringency.
However, if a wine was never bitter or astringent in the first place, TCA doesn’t magically turn it bitter or astringent. That’s why I don’t recommend using such words to describe a wine that’s corked, because these can confuse a person who doesn’t know how to identify a corked wine.
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That is certainly not correct.
Very often I dedect TCA first on the palate - bitter harsh finish - and only later on the nose, and that aplies to wines I know well - and wines I taste the 1st time.
I very well know how to identify a corked wine.
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Be that as it may, TCA can appear in wines in concentrations around 10 ng/l, whereas the world’s most bitter substance, denatonium saccharide, has the bitterness threshold of 0.01 ppm. Which translates to 10,000 ng/l - ie. one thousand times more than the amount of TCA that can be detected in a wine.
Basically this means that to you, TCA is more bitter than the world’s most bitter compound - by three orders of magnitude.
All I’m saying is no matter what you taste, TCA can’t be responsible of the bitterness you taste. Or if it were, the amount of TCA in the wine must be so high that you’d detect it several feet away before you even tasted the wine.
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I wish there was a bot that would always comment “SHOTS FIRED” when I give facts and somebody argues against them. 
(That was a joke, in case somebody hasn’t yet realized I am capable of rudimentary humor.)
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I m no chemist, but fact is that most wines I call “corked” taste bitter for me, definitely much more bitter than the same correct wine - and the bitterness often is the 1st I dedect of the fault.
BTW a friend who is winemaker agrees completely with me:
“this wine has a bitter finish - which it shouldn t have - so it s slightly corked” ( all before we smell TCA), and the analyses later proved it !
My only concern here is that there are other things that might cause a wine to have a slightly bitter finish that are NOT TCA related - so that fact only should ‘prove’ that the wine has any TCA
Cheers
Neither am I, but I’ve studied enough chemistry to understand how many things work in principle.
This is in no conflict with what I said (and to which you responded “that is certainly not correct”). The fact you taste bitterness can come from the fact that TCA mutes fruit flavors, so you’ll detect the bitter flavors that might otherwise be masked by fruit. However, TCA in itself is not bitter. If you add TCA to distilled water, a) which is not bitter in any way; b) in which detection threshold for TCA is much lower than in wine, possibly just 0.03 ng/l; you won’t taste any bitterness. Just the moldy TCA aromas and flavors.
And as Larry said, there are numerous other reasons that might give a wine a bitter finish. TCA just can make it obvious, whereas it wouldn’t be noticed in a flaw-less wine.
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When a wine ( which usually isn t bitter), tastes bitter - and with time TCA appears in the nose, too, and analyses proves a certain TCA level, then the bitterness was an early indication of a corked wine - right.
There are different types of bitterness, and the typical one for TCA I d call in German " hantig", a harsh offputting bitterness that lingers on the back palate and ruins the palate for minutes.
Very different from tannin astringency -
My 2 cents is it is hard to really enjoy a wine with even slight taint - it may drinkable but the fruit is usually so muted that the wine is imbalanced and even that slight moldy smell is very off putting. I agree that I haven’t noticed astringency as a typical featured of corked wines but maybe because I only drink those spoofed wines with super ripe tannin!
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I’m not sure Paul is expressing it correctly, but I know what he is getting at. I too get a sensation on the palate that I associate with corked wine. No idea the science/mechanisms behind it, but there is definitely something perceptible to me.
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I know that I am certainly bitter when a good bottle is corked.
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I also think of TCA as bitter too, I just don’t say it on the forums to protect my anus. I think it has a bitterness similar to if you were to eat paper, very different from a bitterness like espresso.
Are paper bitter?..
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That’s a philosophical question, but paper tastes bitter to me
But why are you eating paper? 
Anyways, now I need to go an lick a piece of paper to find out!
I used to do coffee tasting competitions so I’ve tasted many weird things
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