Message in the DIAM Number?

[Otto_Forsberg]

@David_Bu3ker

Baby carrots and shredded carrots are treated with chlorine based sterilizers as they would otherwise go bad very quickly.

The same thing with garlic. For some reason some producers bleach their garlic to look completely white - these are often corked as well.

@Marshall_Manning

The story I heard was that it was a barrel rack sealer that was being used in France by a number of wineries and that it actually wasn’t TCA, but smelled very similar. Some '90s Tempiers also had this, but unlike TCA this chemical tends to decrease with airing.

TCA isn’t the only compound that is causing a wine to be corked, it’s just the most common one. This is because microbes can process environmental chlorine into harmless TCA - and environmental chlorine is the most common source of chlorine.

However, microbes can encounter chlorine in wood preservatives and fire retardants in the winery, metabolizing these into compounds like TeCA, PCA and TBA - all which cause faults very similar to TCA. The humidity of the wine cellars just encourage the growth of fungi that can cause these faults.

Furthermore, even barrels can be a source of TCA. It doesn’t take more than a small contaminated part of an untoasted stave in one barrel to ruin a lot of wine.