What type of composite cork is this? Just had a corked bottle

WINE TALK
1

Didn’t realize these could even be affected by TCA but it was… sad face.

2

looks like a twin top. I’ve had many poor experiences with these, TCA being the least of the issues. Was this from a ca. 2014/2015 bottling?

3

Did the wine smell corked or only the top or bottom of the cork itself?

Cheers

4

Yeah, twin top. Crap cork.

1 Like
5

2019 bourgogne rouge. annoying.

6

both. or, all 3.

7

is there any way to determine which producers use these corks? having never heard of them before, it seems like something to avoid outright.

8

Corks that are 100% composite like DIAM are TCA free, but the cork in your photo looks to be capped by natural cork on the surface touching the wine.

9

That’s so unfair on this closure.

Not only does it retain the natural advantage of an in-built game of chance ‘TCA or not!?’, you also get added complexity from the glue, and as a certain subset of 15 year olds would tell you, that’s not to be sniffed at [wink.gif]

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10

Many agglomerate corks contain TCA, Diam doesn’t. We won’t accept any of them except Diam.

As David said the cork in question is a Twin-Top, we have had horrible luck with them.

11

Right, re-reading my post it could certainly be misleading- thanks for clarifying. As a consumer, I too wish I could only accept wines closed with DIAM!

12

That’s a little out of date regarding agglomerated corks. DIAM is good but not the only game in town anymore. Trefinos from Portocork also uses the supercritical CO2 treatment of cork crumbs to remove impurities. I’ve used both and now prefer Trefinos.

13

Stewart, are the Trefinos always labeled with a “[CWINE]” logo? I’ll keep my eyes out for them now. They appear to have 3 different oxygen transfer rates, just like DIAM. Out of curiosity, what is it about them you like more?

Some info here for the curious:

14

Stewart,

I was making the point that most agglomerates aren’t cleaned with this technology, they are steam-cleaned, and they are risky. I haven’t come across Trefinos.

You’ve tried both, why do you prefer Trefinos?

15

I just looked at the pdf and noticed that these are a minimum of 75% natural cork - I guess they can put ‘other stuff’ in there as well then? How does this differ from DIAM and others?

And I too would love to know why you prefer these to DIAMs

Cheers

16

Trefinos claims a higher cork to binder ratio, and that feels right to me; i.e., the Trefinos feels more like natural cork in its compressability (is that a word?), in its feel with a corkscrew, and in its ability to be reinserted into an open bottle. I’ve done some side by side bottling trials at the point when I started trying Trefinos (having used DIAM for 4 or 5 previous years). I most recently tasted DIAM 10 vs Trefinos CWINE3 (roughly equivalent projected OTR) on chardonnay in bottle for 2 years and found the Trefinos version slightly fresher and more energetic. These are all very slight preferences, and I still think DIAM is an excellent product.