Michael
You clearly just had a bad run.
Just like my 4 bad btls of Sierra Carche.
Just luck of the draw sometimes.
As others already mentioned, so many variables go into this I hate to point fingers.
TCA sensitivity. Level of experience of the taster (salesperson). Many retailers might be intimidated by having a famous winemaker in their store and don’t wan’t to bring up the fact the wine is bad. A seemingly ‘flat’ wine at stop #1 will taste very different at stop #6 as Loren said.
I’ve even had one or two sales managers (never a winemaker) tell me that it’s fine to taste a corked wine “so you can at least get a general idea of what the wine is like” if they only have the one sample bottle on hand. This I find to be the gravest offense. No person trying to sell wine should ever offer a known flawed product to taste.
Here, taste the over cooked Filet, so you know how the medium rare one will taste!
I think that this winery had a bad batch of corks. Isn’t this why some wineries put lot numbers on bottles ? When I hit the second corked bottle I made a note of the lot number. The next corked bottle had the same number.
I would imagine the same bottling run would have the same lot number, so you’re talking quite a large number of bottles which would make it pretty hard to distinguish which bad corks are where. Now, if you bought a case from the winery, and had 2-3 corked bottles out of it, that means that particular lot/bale were bad. In that case, call the winery and I’m sure they will replace your bottles (if bought direct).
But there is NO excuse for a distributor rep to show corked wines to their customers. They just need to keep opening bottles (hopefully just 2!) until they have a good one to show, and have the winery take credit for that bad bottle.
It just takes time to taste…and obviously some people don’t take the time to check the bottles before they pour.
…but purchased the WHOLE 700 cases available. Lots 8113, and 8114.
Wow, I have only quoted this one line, Daniel, but look how it reads. To the quick viewer (which I just did), it is pretty damning. I think a few corked bottles, shown by a few industry folks, is unfortunate, but it makes the entire industry a joke? Your take on the industry - well, let’s just say our mileage varies.
Last week we had one of our new sales reps stop by with some “hot new wines”
2 California wines, I don’t know the producer but the Cab is called 337 or something and there was a merlot.
The Merlot smelled like a marker. Clearly not a good bottle. The Cab was just bad.
So…we open up some Concannon Petit Sirah and it was corked to high holy hell.
0 - 3. Not a good showing.
Yesterday we tasted two wines that smelled like rubber erasers. We were the last stop and they had sold well all day!
I once knew a rep who was terrible at detecting cork taint. He’d ask us as we all lined up at our typical Monday morning stop whether it was corked. If it was, he tossed it. He also encouraged tasters to pipe up as well. He just explained it to everyone up front and nobody left with hurt feelings at any point. Problem solved.
Come on Dan there is no doubt you have experienced this countless times over the years.
I can’t tell you how many trade tastings where I have identified corked bottles that were half full and had been tasted by dozens of people ITB.
One of the best occasions was when I pointed it out to the pourer and asked if they would mind opening a fresh bottle and was told they were under strict orders not to open new bottles until the first was empty (and this came from one of the big NY wine only distributors)
The reality is that the wine industry–in general, and as a whole–does an incredibly mediocre job of educating people how to recognize TCA in wines. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people pour me blatantly corked wines–at large tastings, in tasting rooms, in wine stores, in restaurants, etc.–and I’ve had to be the one to point it out. And there are few things more annoying than pointing out blatantly corked wines and then have the person pouring it insist “that’s what the wine is supposed to taste like.”
Bruce
Bruce,
I’ve had the same experience. It seems to happen a lot at trade tastings, especially where someone other than an official winery rep is pouring. People at these events don’t seem trained to pour a little of a new bottle for themselves and sniff first. Anymore, I just make mention of it if it’s a wine I care about or really want to try in its pristine form. Generally when I do mention it, they take the time to open a new bottle and see what I mean. If they give me an argument about it, it’s not going to be a place I spend any time at.
A little OT, but amusing, I think, is the several guys (they all seem to be guys, since most wine-oriented women I know are sensitive to cork) I know who are ITB and pretty much insenstive to TCA. They’ve learned to take the word of certain people, at least, that it’s there, but if they poured it out to smell it themselves, they’d virtually never identify the problem. I think that would be a tough handicap to have ITB. The guy who hosts the Monday night tastings of my local blindtasting group (who is not ITB) is beyond insensitive to TCA – he actually usually rates the wine in a lineup that has TCA as his #1 or #2 wine. It’s become an ongoing joke at our tastings. I wonder if others have ever run into someone who actually seems attracted to TCA?
Sensitivity to corked wines is always going to be a problem, ITB or not.
I went to a Costco-sponsored Bordeaux wine tasting last Spring. I think that the volunteers pouring the wines, for the most part, were from various wine stores. One wine was so badly corked that I could smell it the moment the woman pouring the wine pulled the cork out of the bottle. She poured me a glass before I could stop her, and I could not bring it to my nose. When I told her that the bottle was corked, she looked at me like I was speaking in a foreign language. But what really amazed me was that she poured the rest of the bottle in the next few minutes, to at least 20 other people, none of whom seemed to notice that the wine was corked. I tracked down and gave my gl;as sto one of the Costco wine stewards, who ran off to stop the woman from pouring any more, but too late, I am afraid.
I have a dumb newbie question about this.
I have no doubt at all that sensitivity to TCA is all but non-existent in some people and highly developed in others. I’ve seen the result of that many times.
Are those of you who are sensitive, or highly sensitive, certain that it’s TCA you’re picking up and not other faults? If so, how are you sure? Does it really matter?
I know I’m a real lightweight in this regard but I do smell off elements in a lot more wines than those I declare to be ‘corked’. From barnyard odors, to chlorine-like odors, to mousy (assumed to be Brett), to just plain bad smells that seem to blow off after a relatively short while, to what I’ve been told is lumped together as ‘bottle funk’. If they reduce quickly, and I can drink the wine without finding it difficult, I put the issue in the non-TCA column. Right or wrong?
Muted flavors would seem to be a more subtle issue, possibly limited a bit to whether or not you’ve had experience with the same wine. Anything to that theory?
I’ve often concluded that just because I didn’t like what I was smelling (or tasting) didn’t mean it was ‘bad’ in the statistical sense. Have I been too kind to these elements?
Peter, I think there are some elements found in many wines that, in excess, can be considered faults. (volatile acidity, brett, certain reductive characteristics, etc) I don’t think these elements are always faults, but the line is obviously subjective.
More related to the first post: I recently had a supplier pouring wines for one of my accounts. He had been with one of my coworkers for a good part of the day pouring wine from the same bottles. One bottle was obviously corked. When I asked if he thought it was, he said “yes” but didn’t apologize to my customers or instruct them to disregard that sample. I thought that was extremely bad form. I know many people don’t know, but there are so many reasons not to show such a wine even if some people like it anyway. The top two that come to mind are that the wine doesn’t show as well as it could since the chemicals that cause cork taint also mute some aromatic compounds, and that some people might not say anything but will know and that looks really bad.
I do get upset about being poured corked wine in a professional setting, but not as upset as I get about being told false information and then assured (condescendingly, no less) that it’s true after I question it.
Peter,
I think it’s about how adept you are at detecting TCA. A bottle that is any of the following;
“flat, muted, metallic, lacking fruit, clipped” or any number of other adjectives, particularly if it was “funky” coming out of the bottle, but NOT noticeably affected by TCA (obvious notes of wet cardboard, mold chlorine, etc.) is probably TCA tainted anyway and is just manifesting itself in other ways.
The only way to really know is if a) you’ve had a better experience prior or b) opening up another bottle and checking side by side.
Honestly, I’ve had a few wines where I literally opened up 6 bottles side by side. 2 corkers, 2 funkers (bacteria or Brett) one OK bottle and another “not quite right.” Now that is when you know you have a problem!
As you mentioned, there are other, non TCA related flaws such as Brett or other bacterial contamination that can lead to a bad bottle but is not TCA. It’s just really tough to tell unless you have a lot of experience with bad wines. In my particular case I am very sensitive to TCA.
I had a badly corked bottle of French wine at a dinner last week with many experienced tasters and another ITB’er, there was much ‘debate’ over whether the wine was corked among the others. I knew from the first sniff it was bad. I wasn’t sure if people were just trying to be nice so as not to not make the person who brought it feel bad (as if it’s that person’s fault the wine is corked–of course not! It happens.) or if these folks were honestly confused. There was no confusion for me in this case.
In another incident in my distant past, I was tasting at a large trade tasting with a respected CA winemaker and I insisted he open a second bottle of his signature red because I thought the sample he was pouring was corked or otherwise tainted. Turned out the wine was just…bad. Whoopsie! ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}