Rate of flawed bottles

My analysis is not nearly as complete as the others provided, but when I saw this thread, my immediate thought was, "Hmmm, not any corked bottles in a long time. "

Looking at my CT notes confirmed that. Last recorded “flawed/corked wine” was November 2018, last “maybe” was January, 2019. I am not great about recording tasting notes, maybe 40% overall, but I think I record most flawed wines. Really long streak that I am sure I just jinxed. :grin:

2.3% (5/219) this year for me for cellared wines.

Here is a paper with an analysis of the faults clinic at the International Wine Challenge by the AWRI based on a sample of more than 15 000 bottles opened each year - for the last few years I’ve been overseeing this and cork taint is running around 1% of cork-sealed bottles. Judges are mostly high-end professionals including some winemakers and lots of people with letters after their name.

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Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

If you are opening older bottles I’d expect the rate to be much higher of course. The cork industry wasn’t in a good place in the late 1990s, early 2000s - Aussies quote taint rates of 7-10%

Opened yet another badly corked wine tonight.
So i looked a bit into what I have been tasting this year. I’ve tasted around 150 wines and had 12(!!!) bottles that was clearly tainted with TCA. And the 150 includes wines under screw cap and diam.

I should start playing the lottery.

I guess 2024 cannot be worse atleast :sweat_smile:

You’re looking for a higher failure rate?

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Touché.

Are you sure they had TCA? That is a cork byproduct and while theoretically possible with DIAM should never happen with screw cap. Perhaps you are mistaking for some other flaw.

Nobody said anything about screwcapped or wines with DIAM being affected.

I think Lasse’s comment related to some of the 150 not being natural cork, hence the % of cork related faults would have been higher (as the denominator would be lower, but the numerator unaffected).

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Ah ok misread that. Makes much more sense now.

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Yeah no TCA from screw caps or diam hehe. Just wanted to make it clear how insane my TCA rate has been in 2023. Never happened before and probably (hopefully) won’t happen again.

Are you drinking lots of Italian wines? I know they historically have had a higher tendency to have TCA than many of the other regions In Europe. Anyone else have any comments about that?

Do you have data to back that claim up? Or is it just a hunch based on own experiences?

A hunch based on anecdotal info…

I’ve only had two bad bottles this year. Unfortunately, one was this week. A 2012 Domaine de la Côte Sainte-Epine St. Joseph Vieilles Vignes was badly corked. The other was 2002 Cristian Senez Champagne Brut Millésimé; an oxidized mess.

I drink wines from all around the world, mostly European wines though. No pattern with Italian wines from my bottles with TCA. It has been pretty evenly distributed between countries/regions in Europe.

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10-20 years ago that really seemed to be the case, but the last three corked wines I have opened were all west coast USA produced.
The rate of TCA affected wines has dropped, thanks to alternative closures. I don’t track percentages, but the rate with natural cork remains unacceptable.

Your original post made it sound like an undeniable fact, not something based on a hunch.

However, based on the data of the wines I’ve drunk, Italy does seem to have slightly higher % - if other European countries come in at around 1.1 to 1.4%, Italy had in incidence of 1.8% of corked bottles. based on the sample size of 2700 bottles.

However, the difference is pretty insignificant. On average, you could buy more than 175 bottles of French and Italian wines and they both would have the same number of corked bottles. Italy would have one corked bottle more at around 180 bottles.