How Much TCA Is Too Much TCA?

WINE TALK
41

How horrible for you, Cameron.

I agree entirely that 2.0 is BS. It’s convenient for them to claim 2.0, it means that they can then claim that the proportion of corks affected is lower than it would otherwise be.

42

I don’t know my personal level of TCA identification but I do know when the wine has no nose or taste that it is usually TCA. Wet cardboard comes in second.

43

Note that a bottle contaminated at 0.5 ppt still has something like 15 trillion molecules of TCA. I believe it can affect perception of the wine at that level. At 100 or 1000 times less? Not clear, but I suspect not. It would be a difficult experiment to do carefully, because it’s difficult to monitor or verify levels that low without using assumptions or expensive technology.

-Al

44

Do you mean a wine you’re familiar with? If your including wines you haven’t had, if you can’t smell or taste TCA, how could you know it’s not just boring or shut down?

45

Is that really true, though? Can’t you have a wine which loses some flavor and aroma and character because of TCA, even though the TCA level is too low for you to identify the actual smell and taste of TCA itself (wet cardboard etc.)? A wine that is just on the dead/flat side as compared to a clean bottle, but doesn’t have the signature TCA profile?

46

Or suffering from shipping shock.

Kidding, kidding.

47

[dance-clap.gif]

Another phenomenon that I believe is real but has the potential to be an unverifiable, all-purpose explanation.

I believe that TCA can sometimes just mute a wine without the TCA being apparent (because I’ve had that experience and only had the TCA became smellable with hours or a day of air), but I think we need to be careful of diagnosing undetectable TCA whenever a wine has no flavor.

48

Again, if TCA is responsible for a wine neing dumbed down/scalped/muted, then your sensory receptors are reacting to the presence of TCA. The TCA concentration is thus above the threshold of your sensory apparatus to perceive its presence, even if you do not recognize the perceived fault as TCA.

49

It might be more precise to say you perceive its impact rather than is presence.

50

Yes, and the identification threshold is dependent on other factors. So, it’s common for people to not detect it until the “wine opens” up a bit. You get that in group tasting where maybe a couple people think it’s corked, a couple more suspect it might be, and the majority don’t think so. Awhile later it becomes clear to the majority.

Some people lack the receptors to perceive it at all.

I get a tactile sensation from it on the underside tip of my tongue.

We had a wine recently that definitely had a mustiness to it, in with the dense fruit. Some thought it was corked. I thought it was more like mildew. With more time it became more clearly mildewy (but there were still a few in the “corked” and “it’s fine” camps).

51

Wes,

I’ve had that experience, and recently too. One of the group says indignantly ‘this wine is not corked!’ and I am tempted to say ‘not to you, maybe.’

52

We have a couple people in our blind tasting group who never seem to pick it up. It’s pretty funny. A normally great wine will be undrinkable to some, rated poorly by others, and that one person just loves it. “Here ya go! Take the rest of the bottle. Would you like the rest of what’s in my glass, too?” Not exactly the worst problem to have, I suppose.

53

It is BS. However, the slope does get slippery when you get down towards 1ppt where very few tasters can pickup the TCA marker but the wine is adversely affected nonetheless. That why we had to convene a panel of third party experts to confirm the variations and adverse affects.

Also, I corrected my thread…I had written “tremendous bottle to bottle consistency”. I meant “inconsistency”.

The good news is that their now appears to be some technology that can read natural corks as they pass by and detect TCA rates though its scaleability isn’t nearly what it needs to be to solve the TCA issue. I suspect they will get it there however over time. IN the meantime the horse has left the barn and winemakers have a whole host of good solutions for closures…DIAM and Nomacork are my choices for TCA free closures with predictable OTR and it sounds like the screw cap guys are getting there too (with regards to OTR) though I still have reservations regarding screw caps and proper seals - too easy to have bad seal or for screwcap to get knocked around and seal compromised.

54

Okay, got it. The tough thing is that, unless you open another bottle of the wine or just had it recently, you may perceive it without being able to know you have perceived it.

It’s like you walk into a garden for the first time, and a number of plants were pulled up and removed yesterday. I guess you can perceive that those plants aren’t there, but you wouldn’t know they had been pulled up unless you had visited the garden yesterday, or someone told you that those plants had just been removed.

55

Okay, got it. The tough thing is that, unless you open another bottle of the wine or just had it recently, you may perceive it without being able to know you have perceived it.

It’s like you walk into a garden for the first time, and a number of plants were pulled up and removed yesterday. I guess you can perceive that those plants aren’t there, but you wouldn’t know they had been pulled up unless you had visited the garden yesterday, or someone told you that those plants had just been removed.[/quote]

Thats why its “insidious”…you don’t know the wine is “flawed”…you just think its “meh”.

56

Even if the TCA problem is sorted, which as you say is subject to scalability problems, that still leaves varying amounts of oxygen getting through the closure. I am noticing this more and more, and it’s very insidious and really bad for the impact of the wine.

57

And imagine how many wines are like that and how many people won’t buy those wines because of a single, non-typical experience. Cork is just not a good closure in 2016. Seriously - that’s the best we can do?

I’ve had experiences like Oliver mentions. You detect a serious flaw and someone right next to you doesn’t find anything wrong. One night a few friends came over and I opened a bottle. One guy looked at me and wondered if I thought it was off. “Of course,” I said. So we put it out and three other people enjoyed it and emptied the bottle. I felt like a douche, but why rain on their parade?

58

Yep - just mimics what I’ve continued to say all along.

  1. Most consumers are not educated as to what TCA is - and our industry has no ‘up side’ in order to do so from an economic standpoint.

  2. Everyone has a different detection threshold with TCA - spoke with the folks at Enartis/Vinquiry, who run threshold tests, and they mentioned that it ranged from 1ppt to those who could not pick it up at 6 ppt (all wine industry folks)

  3. I believe everyone agrees that if a wine is just slightly corked, it’s probably worse than heavily corked - especially for those consumers who would have no idea.

  4. As I said earlier, if a wine is just slightly corked and the aromas are ‘dead’, even knowledgeable wine folks might believe the wine is in a ‘dumb phase’ or something else.

  5. So many wine consumers, including many on here, choose just to ‘accept the fact’ that some wines will be corked, and choose not to try to get reimbursed for them (older vintage / cost of wine not enough to deal with hassle / etc.).

Based on all of the above, do we, as an industry, have any clue what ‘true’ TCA rates are?

Cheers.