I’ve never had a corked or oxidized wine bottled under a Diam cork…until today. 2018 Walter Scott Freedom Hill Chardonnay. The cork is a Diam10. This wine is definitely corked! I couldn’t believe it. Wet rotting cardboard, mustiness, totally muted fruit. All the tell-tale signs were there.
Maybe it’s just a bunch of funky reduction? Into the decanter it goes, sat awhile, no improvement at all. Maybe it’s just my nose? I poured a little glass, and nonchalantly passed it to my girlfriend. I didn’t say a thing about the wine being spoiled. She took one sip and winced “Blech this is nasty!” I came back to it periodically over the course of 6 hours without any improvement. I just couldn’t believe it.
I feel like I’m crazy. Can I be making this up? I wish one of you were here to verify. Is this even possible? It’s not possible if the manufacturing was done properly, but maybe there was a slip up in quality control? Could I be mistaking something else for TCA? I don’t think so, but it’s possible I suppose. There was a recent post worrying about quality of Diam keeping up with demand.
What are your thoughts? Has anyone experienced this? Am I nuts?
Walter Scott Chards can have a very reductive/oak char kind of character–kind of PYCM or old Coche times three. Perhaps that’s what you were noting? In my limited experience, it didn’t blow off either.
It can happen but it is very rare. My situation - the top of the DIAM was corked, but not the bottom, and the wine was fine. Had I smelled just the cork, I would have been convinced the wine was compromised, but it was not.
Curious to hear your specifics - and what the winery did about it as they really do need to know if this is happening.
Reduction is so different than TCA - at least it is to me. I’m not sure how anyone would confuse the two - unless they truly have not been ‘trained’ in what a ‘corked’ wine smells like . . .
And if you haven’t, stop by my tasting room - I have a bottle of a great Zin that I opened 3 1/2 years ago and kept the wine and the cork - and it is still one of the worst corked corks I have ever smelled.
That sounds like the cork top was mouldy, not corked, because I’ve experienced that same phenomenon many times. I’ve had lots of wines from cellars that have had humidity issues or obvious water damage. If you sniff corks from these bottles, you’d bet the wines were corked, because they smell exactly like TCA, but that’s only because the cork top has soaked up the smell from the air. The wines are fine.
On the contrary, many TCA-contaminated corks don’t smell corked at all, yet they can turn the wine horribly corked, because it doesn’t take many molecules to ruin a wine; I’ve had many corked wines where the cork doesn’t smell one little bit corked. Normally wines that are corked have corks that smell corked and wines that are fine have corks that don’t smell corked, but having a cork smell of TCA or not smell of TCA is not any kind of indication that the wine is or is not corked.
Yes. It was a totally off the top of the head comment by someone with no data to back up the concern.
That said, do you still have the cork? Perhaps communicate with the winery, and see if they want the cork to check it.
There is no such thing as perfect quality (I worked in QA/QC for 28 years), so while I doubt a flaw in a DIAM cork even 99.999% good lets a few out once in a while. No different than ANY other product.
Otto’s second point is why I never smell corks anymore, as it’s apt to confuse me rather than tell me anything. On a side note, I never smell the top of the bottle, either, because it always smells bad to me.
Noah is probably referring to my comment. I did not specify what I mean’t so I’ll elaborate. In no way am I suggesting that I have found the cork component contaminated. What I have found is that with the same product ordered I’m noticing slight differences in the ease on insert to the wine bottle and removal from the wine bottle. Could it also be bottle variation…possibly but unlikely. It has never prevented me from going through the bottling process. My sense is that cork material sees plant polyols and a beeswax binder to form the technical cork. Slight changes there could explain what I’m experiencing. Not a show stopper and in fact I’m very pleased with the DIAM product and their lot tracking. That said the DIAM process is pretty exacting and as they gain market share it’s important to make sure the QA/QC stays sound. A few months back I ordered over 10K DIAM corks from them and I luckily got shoehorned into the queue as they are clearly pounded with new and repeat orders. That’s all I was getting to with my comment.
Exactly. I wouldn’t ever confuse the two, and I’ve had way, way too much “training” over 45+ years of wine drinking with regard to TCA, and in bagged carrots, apples, and bottles of Prilosec and Tylenol (TBrA in those cases I think). I just threw that out there because Noah brought up reduction as a possibility in his note.
I’ve had several lower end supermarket bottles (Avalon, Turning Leaf, KJ), both red and white, that had blatant TCA and were under screwcap. A few years ago I was having lunch at a bar and the Chardonnay was corked. The bartender was surprised because it was a screwcap but he agreed the wine was tainted.
I also recall having one or two Champers under Mytik that were struck with TCA
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