Your percentage of TCA/Corked wines--by continent.

WINE TALK
1

In a recent chat with a friend, who told me he has never had a corked wine, I got to thinking. Why is that?
I have had my share, but not so much recently, say the last 5 years, maybe 2 bottles. That’s about .25% ratio of all the wines I open. Not bad.

I ‘think’ I can attribute this to primarily being a cali drinker these days. I see notes all over the ‘other’ continent that are filled with corked/TCA/‘badly treated when made’ wines. When I did drink that shi—stuff, my numbers were more like 3-4% overall.

Is there something to this?

Give me two things:
Your percentage of US to European wine and how many TCA/Corked wine of each in say…the last 5 years.

Heat damage need not apply.

Thanks

2

I think it’s important to differentiate between the ages of the wines that were corked which were consumed over the past five years. My experience has been that older wines, say 40+ years of age, have a far less probability of being corked than younger wines. I have also heard from a few people that wines produced in the past five or so years also have less incidences of being corked.

3

Great point, but isn’t a corked wine corked from the get-go? --or at least destined to be such from an ‘in bottle’ flaw?

I probably agree with your final statement.

4

My point is if someone drinks old Bordeaux and they say 2% and also drinks young-ish Cali Cabs and they say 7% for those wines, that doesn’t mean that there is less corked Bordeaux than Cali Cabs.

5

I got that much, Ray. Its just an observation, and obviously your mileage will vary.

6

I would say this is true. The Portuguese cork industry was hit hard by their late revolution, and quality dropped precipitously during the 80s and 90s. Once alternative closures became popular, the cork industry had to really up its game to stay competitive.

Even when I have encountered the occasional corked older wine, it has never shown anywhere near the levels of taint of some of the travesties I encountered from the late 90s.

7

I’m finding far fewer corked wines now than I was five years ago - just an anecdotal observation, not a data point. I think wines bottled in the 1990s seemed to be worst affected, but things may be (he says hopefully) getting better.

8

I find that about 5% of the wines that I drink are either corked or damaged in some other way (oxidized, heat damage, etc). I’m one of those that is overly sensitive to TCA. My wife notices even before I do. It’s very disappointing to have a great wine reduced to plonk by TCA [swearing.gif]

9

I’m in an incrdible bad luck streak over the last 4 months, in having a really high incidence of damaged wines and also prematurely over-the-hill wines. The latter might be a reflection of selection and drinking a lot of 90s Cal stuff. So that’s understandable.
I swear though over the last four months worth of aged wine (say older than 2003) I’d guess that I’ve had 7-9% corked wine. Just guessing I’d say a dozen bottles over 150. If I were to reduce the sample set to the 50 best bottles, I think it is even higher maybe 6 bottles.
Of that 150 another dozen have had some serious other flaw rendering them not worth drinking. Almost all of these were stored in temp-control by me (or likely by sharers) so storage is not the issue. It really has put a damper on how enthusiastic I am to pull what I’d hope would be good bottles.
Drinking primarily 1980-2000, I think I do find more corked European wine (by percentage) than California wine, and feel like there are fewer corked bottles in newer vintages (ie post-95). Though the last CAL bottle I opened 99 Ridge Geyserville was corked. My wife is incredibly cork-sensitive and mine seems to be increasing to the point of being high. If I had to make a wild guess I would say over the last year: Cal corked = 5%, Euro corked = 7% Pre 95 = 7% Post 00= 4%

10

I haven’t looked at more recent statistics but IIRC the US Cork Quality Council [which includes the main cork producers] backed by ETS Labs and rigorous testing protocols using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry published figures which showed that TCA in their imported cork bales had been reduced by 80% on average from 2001 to 2008 to 0.8 parts per trillion from 4.0 ppt. This is the outcome of the major investment in research, testing and production facilities and the adoption of QMS by the major cork suppliers in the face of the success of alternative closures following the overall decline in quality of natural cork in the previous decades.

Bearing in mind the huge difference in sensitivities that individuals have to TCA [physiological and learned recognition] this would logically take detection levels way down across the board since only the expert super-sensitive can detect a fault at levels around 1ppt - and even then may not identify it correctly.

And I understood Ray Tuppatsch’s comments about old and more recent vintages to mean that TCA [which certainly contaminates wine quickly from ‘available’ TCA in/on a cork] occurred much less frequently 40 years ago and has become less prevalent again recently i.e. was much less present in corks in those older and more recent vintages than in the 80s and 90s - which certainly ties in with information from studies, books like George Taber’s ‘To Cork or Not to Cork’ and the anecdotal record.

OTOH as far as differences by country/continent are concerned that may also have be affected by the care [or lack of it] that was taken in supplying different markets as well prices/cork grades purchased plus the testing regimes, if any, undertaken by the winemakers. For whatever reason there certainly seems to have been more TCA in the Antipodes than in other wine producing areas and would be one of the reasons that most of the wines of New Zealand and Australia are now under alternative closures – mainly screwcap.

11

I’m not keeping score, but I’d guess I’m about 1 bottle in every 100 with TCA issues. I never thought about a Europe vs New World split, so I can’t help you there.

I should point out that I have noticed several corked bottles of bourbon over the past couple of years. Had a bottle of Woodford Reserve that was corked and then a bottle of Elijah Craig - also corked.

12

Statistics on cork taint tend to be highly questionable. There are a lot of people – even some with lots of experience – who can’t pick out a corked wine. They just haven’t linked the signature smell with cork taint. Also, as noted above sensitivity seems to vary widely. Even beyond that it isn’t always clear if a wine is corked. Experienced tasters will disagree. Opening a back-up bottle or referencing a recently tasted good bottle is necessary. I would add to that that mild cork taint tends to be a little harder to pick up and easier to ignore on young, big wines.

My statistics pulled from CellarTracker are as follows:

All Bottles:
Tasting notes written = 1,645
Bad bottles from all causes = 69 (4.19%)
Bad bottles from cork taint = 41 (2.49%)

France:
Tasting notes written = 1,151
Bad bottles from all causes = 52 (4.52%)
Bad bottles from cork taint = 28 (2.43%)

USA:
Tasting notes written = 248
Bad bottles from all causes = 8 (3.23%)
Bad bottles from cork taint = 5 (2.02%)

Italy:
Tasting notes written = 106
Bad bottles from all causes = 4 (3.77%)
Bad bottles from cork taint = 3 (2.83%)

Spain:
Tasting notes written = 73
Bad bottles from all causes = 3 (4.11%)
Bad bottles from cork taint = 3 (4.11%)

I’m not sure there is enough data to draw any firm conclusions, but the occurrence rate seems to be pretty similar for each country. Oxidation is a major contributor to bad bottles from France. I’ll rerun the data based on vintage if I get a chance.

13

I’m not sure why it would differ by continent. Isn’t all cork produced predominantly in one area?