My wine consumption is modest, but I have had enough bottles of wine that it is highly probable that some have been corked. Although I have experienced wines that tasted poorly, I have never been confident enough to call it corked. I can and have googled “corked wine”, but I still don’t understand it to the point that I would recognize it if it was in the glass in front of me. Can you help me understand?
I had corked wine many times before it was given a name, or before TCA was explained to me. The wines smelled like my grandparents musty basement. Imagine a dirt floor basement in which newspapers have been decaying for years. After I associated the smell with the name, i couldn’t miss it, even when others noted no problem.
I’m sure that if someone can pour you a glass of clearly corked wine even once, you will have the identification locked in your sensory memory.
3 Likes
The best way to detect it is to have another bottle of the same wine simultaneous that is not corked. Hard to plan for that sometimes for sure, but if the wine smells musty, wet cardboard, wet dog, and the flavors are stripped, open another bottle and if it’s OK the differences will be astounding. Levels from mild to badly corked exist, but if it’s bad its unmistakable. It’s also useful for another taster to identify, and I’ve asked my wife often, since she seems more sensitive to corked wines.
3 Likes
Not sure if this is a small sample size thing for me, but many of the wines that I’ve opened that were for sure corked actually had a super soft and spongy cork. Is that common? (I know a corked wine can have a solid cork, but it’s uncanny how many times a wine with a really soft and spongy cork is actually corked based on my limited experience.)
2 Likes
Soak a piece of cardboard for awhile in a bag and take a whiff of the fermentation.
1 Like
I don’t believe that a soft, spongy cork is an indicator.
Moldy cardboard is the descriptor I’ve seen most frequently.
What’s sneaky and sad is that a wine with slight cork taint often just seems dull; the aromas and palate aren’t bad, they are just muted and something that should give pleasure is just ‘meh’.
A few decades ago I was at a friend’s house for dinner. He opened a 1964 La Mission Haut Brion. As soon as the cork came out of the bottle, he screamed “Open all of the windows!!!” He dumped it down the sink and ran cold water, but it still took half an hour before we could eat or drink. Thankfully, a once in a lifetime (I hope) experience.
Dan Kravitz
3 Likes
Also, there are varying levels of TCA sensitivity. Mine is very low so I look like a boor sometimes opening bottles of wine at dinners and other tasters acting like I walked in with dog poop on my shoes!
4 Likes
That’s tragic. Worst I had had was a Loire rose. So bad and persistent TCA, but cheap. Down the sink and tried brushing my teeth. Actually you should recork and put outside in trash. No sense contaminated your sink.
I smelled a jar containing the chemical TCA. You don’t dare open the jar, you just have to bring the lid of the sealed jar up near your nose and it’s pretty intense. After that, a corked wine is always a chemical smell to me such that I don’t have to think of something similar like wet newspaper; it’s unmistakable.
2 Likes
Sometimes I get an whiff of something very much like TCA walking down a supermarket aisle. I have no idea what the source of that is.
1 Like
The next time you are at a restaurant that has a great btg list, ask them if they have any ‘corked wine’ you can smell. Or go to your local wine shop and ask them.
Everyone can ‘explain’ what it should smell like but there is no better way to understand it then to have a wine that is ‘undoubtedly’ corked.
Cheers
3 Likes
Lots of veggies pick it up from being sanitized w chlorine then packed in wood/cardboard. Carrot, celery, really any veggie can pick it up.
1 Like
Also if you don’t get the flavor of TCA (harder if you don’t know yet what it is) you can tell due to lack of flavor it should have.
As suggested, compared to a correct bottle and then you will be able to pinpoint the taste.
The association with wet cardboard isn’t literal, it’s wet cardboard that got some mold which contacted chlorine, which reacted creating TCA. So, it is TCA. But, simply wetting clean cardboard won’t give you that smell. You can smell it here and there in an urban/suburban environment where mold growing one something came into contact with chlorinated water.
A lot of food is treated with chlorine to protect it, but if there’s mold, that can react with the chlorine and create TCA. TCA is also common in tubing, so drinking water at restaurants sometimes have it. I suppose it follows produce department misting systems could become infected. Particular gross is I’ve had it on fish in restaurants a couple times - like just part of one side - which indicates chlorine was used to salvage, where something was growing on the surface.
We’ve had many corked wines.
All the descriptions are good but Larry has the best suggestion - ask someone in a store if they have any. I’ve kept corked wines for learning purposes to show people what they smell like.
But the closest is the mildew that you get if you set a bundle of papers or some cardboard out. Wet it and set it in a corner of the basement or somewhere outside for a while. After a week or two, lift it and smell underneath. That’s pretty much what you get. A kind of mushroomy, moldy smell.
2 Likes
Yes, this. I had a winemaker once tell me that a good example can be smelling the inside of a bag of baby carrots. The bleach chemical inside the bag has been a dead ringer for me ever since when trying to identify TCA.
1 Like
That is so true. I will never again buy vegetables sold in a sealed plastic bag. Broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beans, peas…
1 Like
yes. bagged “baby” carrots are often rife with tca
I once ate a banana that was corked. It smelled and tasted just like those damp musty produce shippers. It was unmistakable.
Wet cardboard is the closest approximation. But have you never drunk with others where someone identified a wine as corked? That’s the best way to learn what it’s about (assuming the other person knows something).
You might try going to a restaurant or wine bar with a knowledgeable staff and ask if they happen to have a corked bottle lying around that you could sniff as an educational exercise.
As Matt points out, there is a wide range of sensitivity. Some people can detect it at levels that are a fraction of the average threshold. It sounds like you may have a very high threshold.
Finally, some people are strongly repelled by the smell of TCA, while others of us just experience it as a flaw.
In most cases, it tends to mute the aromas and flavors of the wine (TCA interferes with the perception of various flavor/aroma compounds), in addition to lending its own smell.