To Cork or Not To Cork?

I am at a total loss to understand what is romantic either about a waiter removing a cork from a bottle or handing it to you.

I'm not at a total loss to understand your position, like I said. And I can easily understand your total loss, for the reasons I also mentioned.

Has anyone noticed....... that every time this subject arises we all (myself included) say precisely the same things we have said in the past.

I propose that we call a moratorium on the subject of corks vs. alternate closures until:

(a) Some radically new invention comes along to grab our attention
(b) Chateaux Lafite, Margaux and Cheval Blanc start using screwcaps
(c) The sky actually falls
(d) The cow finally succeeds in jumping over the moon
(e) I am served a bottle of Lafite under screwcap and do not either shoot the sommelier or commit suicide

Best
Rogov

Damn it, Rogov, I thought I had a hint of a new perspective in my comments and I don't remember ever seeing anyone say what you just did. I know you are not losing your power of subtle distinction, yet.

David,

You'll notice that I did not say that people should be comforted by this fact. I only put it in to counter-balance the old, wrong info still being used in these discussions, particularly the 5% figure that has shown up in this discussion. Also, the writer I was responding to put 2% up as some figure we hope to attain in the future once there is less demand to for corks.

For example, most of the corks we use have a taint rate of between .1% and .2%.

My main point is that we have a discussion based on the current reality, rather than the poor performance of the cork industry in the past.

FYI, corks from high quality producers are already under 2%.

I am sure that statistics like that are a great comfort to someone who purchased 100 bottles of the same wine. The issue is when I plunk down a substantial chunk of money for my one or two bottles of a wine - and one (or both) is corked. The percentages don't mean that much to me anymore. There is nothing romantic about dumping what should have been a great wine down the drain.

Sorry Folks,
Since I was the one to start this thread, if everyone feels it should be closed, then thats what should happen.
I will try to some more in depth searching of topics before posting. I thought I did for this subject and didnt find anything.
My apologies

I only put it in to counter-balance the old, wrong info still being used in these discussions, particularly the 5% figure that has shown up in this discussion.

I think I am the only person who mentioned 5% in this discussion and I actually wrote 'up to 5%'.

I am glad you have a very low level of bad corks but I think all that is proof of is that you have a very low level of bad corks, not that therefore someone opening a wine doesn't risk an up to 5% corked wine.

We opened 9 2001 vintage bottles last night at our tasting club. One was terribly corked and it was to be the highlight of the tasting. (not to mention the German Riesling whose cork had crumbled away to dust)

Last month at a winery tasting with the owner 8 wines were tasted. 3 had screwcaps and were good. Of the remaining 5, 2 were corked and one was faulty in some way but I couldn't lay the blame at the closure.

Being at the winery, replacement bottles were at hand so you could say that instead of 2 corked out of 5 it was 2 corked out of 8 wines closed with cork. (and I changed my mind about buying their wines to take home)

While annecdotally it seems to me that cork failure rate has declined with recentl vintages I don't think we can be absolute that, as consumers, we don't risk an up to 5% failure rate.

Sorry Folks,
Since I was the one to start this thread, if everyone feels it should be closed, then thats what should happen.

Naw!!

Ron, you're new here. Welcome and stick around. You've initiated some interesting discussions.

There can be very few - if any - wine related topics that haven't been touched on in this, the oldest online wine forum, and if we didn't post on subjects that had previously been raised then we may as well close now...

If people are bored with a subject then they won't join in.

Keep posting!

[Robin Garr]

Sorry Folks,
Since I was the one to start this thread, if everyone feels it should be closed, then thats what should happen.
I will try to some more in depth searching of topics before posting. I thought I did for this subject and didnt find anything.
My apologies

Nothing to apologize for, Ron. And no worries, we almost never close threads here. No need. One conversation is as good as another, as long as the attacks don't get personal!

Ron, Rogov always says that, and always wants to avoid discussing it. And he's always vexed when he can't resist opening the subsequent posts and then joining back into the fray.

Nah, this thread pretty much followed its usual arc...with the addition of a couple of new participants to add some leavening, always welcome...and once again stands have been taken, curs have been mudgeoned, and Covert has wandered around and in and out as is his wont.

It's a standard case of one part of the populace being stodgily stuck in place without any really valid reason except their penchant for steadily looking backwards over their shoulder, and another segment that eagerly (and yes, perhaps too eagerly) prefers looking forward for ways to correct problems.

Or, strangely enough, so-called wine lovers that are often more in love with fault-laden plugs of tree bark than the wine they profess to love so deeply.

(Ooops, have I inadvertently revealed a bias???? )

Hoke...

You, biased? Me, biased? Never!!!!!! Absolutely and positively never!!!! Of rather strong opinions, bien sur, but biased? Ye gods man.....

So as to not disappoint anyone I'll throw in my normal response. I can't go back ten years and cut and paste so I'll just type away.

I have never believed the 5% number (and I've even seen higher). I’ve always thought that the alternative closure crowd exaggerates the problem. That said, I'm willing to accept that my tolerance for TCA may be very different from others.

Someone once got very angry at me because he/she was willing to accept my 1-2% and he/she couldn't understand why I could not accept their 5-7%. My response to that is that I think they may be missing other reasons why the wine is bad (heat damage, sulfur problems, oxidization, Brett, etc.).

I’m sure I’m wrong!

[David M. Bueker]

Tom,

You're wrong.

A lot of "corked" depends on peoples' individual threasholds. Before my head injury I was incredibly sensitive to the effects of TCA. I hope to be so again, rather than just living with the thought of a poor bottle just being "bad wine." There is a distinct difference between corked and heat damaged. Another factor is the clarity of the affected wine to cork defects. I drink a lot of Riesling and Champagne - both of which show cork problems very clearly. That can also account for the fact that my cork incidence rate is much higher than 1-2%.

I could go on at length related to many parts of this thread (since my last response), but lucky for everyone (but me) I have a meeting to attend.

I think it's as much about personality as it is about wine. I agree about the superiority of screwcaps. But I would dearly miss corks. This feeling is caused no doubt partly by the fact I am old. I also miss a world where people walked on the street without a plug in their ear. I have not found the percentage of corked wines in my personal world to be high... usually no more than 1 or 2 a year. But I also mostly drink wine as opposed to taste wine. I very seldom open more than 1 or 2 bottles a week. I don't go to many tastings. As the amount of corked wine I encounter is very low, I don't see it as that much of a problem. And I do feel comforted in a way by the familiar ritual of extracting a wine cork. Does the ritual serve a necessary practical purpose?... no ... not especially. But in many respects the familiarity of ritual is its own reward.

Your results may vary.

Glenn

Ron, Rogov always says that, and always wants to avoid discussing it. And he's always vexed when he can't resist opening the subsequent posts and then joining back into the fray.

Nah, this thread pretty much followed its usual arc...with the addition of a couple of new participants to add some leavening, always welcome...and once again stands have been taken, curs have been mudgeoned, and Covert has wandered around and in and out as is his wont.

It's a standard case of one part of the populace being stodgily stuck in place without any really valid reason except their penchant for steadily looking backwards over their shoulder, and another segment that eagerly (and yes, perhaps too eagerly) prefers looking forward for ways to correct problems.

Or, strangely enough, so-called wine lovers that are often more in love with fault-laden plugs of tree bark than the wine they profess to love so deeply.

(Ooops, have I inadvertently revealed a bias???? )

This topic is the equivalent of boxing forums' "Could Ali Punch?" threads - and Rogov chimes in at about the same time the Phantom Punch is brought up.

I think it's as much about personality as it is about wine. I agree about the superiority of screwcaps. But I would dearly miss corks. This feeling is caused no doubt partly by the fact I am old. I also miss a world where people walked on the street without a plug in their ear. I have not found the percentage of corked wines in my personal world to be high... usually no more than 1 or 2 a year. But I also mostly drink wine as opposed to taste wine. I very seldom open more than 1 or 2 bottles a week. I don't go to many tastings. As the amount of corked wine I encounter is very low, I don't see it as that much of a problem. And I do feel comforted in a way by the familiar ritual of extracting a wine cork. Does the ritual serve a necessary practical purpose?... no ... not especially. But in many respects the familiarity of ritual is its own reward.

Your results may vary.

Glenn

Glenn, I don’t know if you noticed my post in which I opined that the closure preference indeed is a matter of personality. People who like SUVs don’t usually argue with sports car owners that they are wrong because sports cars are not practical or some such. Yet wine drinkers argue tooth and nail that a closure should be this or that. And what is impractical about doing something that you like to do if it doesn’t hurt anybody else? You could say that looking at the Grand Canyon while driving past it is impractical, I guess. You would be better off keeping your eyes on the road lest you run over a piece of glass or something.

I drink a lot of Riesling and Champagne - both of which show cork problems very clearly. That can also account for the fact that my cork incidence rate is much higher than 1-2%.

David,

That's a great point! I drink a lot of red wine. Excluding Sauternes, 95% of my cellared bottles are red. That is likely a factor in our different %s.

I am at a total loss to understand what is romantic either about a waiter removing a cork from a bottle or handing it to you.

The first is a delay in getting to the wine.

The second is unecessary meaningless idiotic flim-flam and a reminder that your romantic evening has an up to 5% chance of being ruined because you're going to have to tell the waiter the wine is corked.

I can only think the writer hasn't had enough bottles closed with a screwcap for it to become normal.

The idea of sniffing the cork to detect TCA does not make as much sense as sticking your nose in the glass. But maybe they show it to you to demonstrate how long and fine a cork it is, and that it is not damp all the way to the top. I do sniff the cork when I remove it from the bottle but have never noticed anything of significance at all. Good or bad. Not too sure why I do it.

The idea of sniffing the cork to detect TCA does not make as much sense as sticking your nose in the glass. But maybe they show it to you to demonstrate how long and fine a cork it is, and that it is not damp all the way to the top. I do sniff the cork when I remove it from the bottle but have never noticed anything of significance at all. Good or bad. Not too sure why I do it.

Neil, I hope some others chime in on this, otherwise you will write off my opinion as corked - and I am sure it won't be the first or last time. But I have always detected TCA and every other flaw on the cork much more easily than in the glass, where alcohols and other volatiles fight for recognition. If you have never noticed anything significant on a cork, either your nose is flawed or you are drinking some pretty sterile wine. I know that sounds harsh, but it is a fact.

I think it's as much about personality as it is about wine. I agree about the superiority of screwcaps. But I would dearly miss corks. This feeling is caused no doubt partly by the fact I am old. I also miss a world where people walked on the street without a plug in their ear. I have not found the percentage of corked wines in my personal world to be high... usually no more than 1 or 2 a year. But I also mostly drink wine as opposed to taste wine. I very seldom open more than 1 or 2 bottles a week. I don't go to many tastings. As the amount of corked wine I encounter is very low, I don't see it as that much of a problem. And I do feel comforted in a way by the familiar ritual of extracting a wine cork. Does the ritual serve a necessary practical purpose?... no ... not especially. But in many respects the familiarity of ritual is its own reward.

Your results may vary.

Glenn

Very well said Glenn! It's virtually the same as my feelings that I touched on in another thread, likely less effectively than your words here.
Jeff

I think it's as much about personality as it is about wine. I agree about the superiority of screwcaps. But I would dearly miss corks. This feeling is caused no doubt partly by the fact I am old. I also miss a world where people walked on the street without a plug in their ear. I have not found the percentage of corked wines in my personal world to be high... usually no more than 1 or 2 a year. But I also mostly drink wine as opposed to taste wine. I very seldom open more than 1 or 2 bottles a week. I don't go to many tastings. As the amount of corked wine I encounter is very low, I don't see it as that much of a problem. And I do feel comforted in a way by the familiar ritual of extracting a wine cork. Does the ritual serve a necessary practical purpose?... no ... not especially. But in many respects the familiarity of ritual is its own reward.

Your results may vary.

Glenn

Glenn, I don’t know if you noticed my post in which I opined that the closure preference indeed is a matter of personality. People who like SUVs don’t usually argue with sports car owners that they are wrong because sports cars are not practical or some such. Yet wine drinkers argue tooth and nail that a closure should be this or that. And what is
impractical about doing something that you like to do if it doesn’t hurt anybody else? You could say that looking at the
Grand Canyon while driving past it is impractical, I guess. You would be better off keeping your eyes on the road lest you
run over a piece of glass or something.

Also well said Covert.

Jeff

Hi Peter,

The estimate of 1-2% comes from Practical Winery and Vineyard here:

http://www.practicalwinery.com/winter2011/closure2.htm

This is based on actual scientific studies which you can review if you like. I don't doubt that scenario you describe happened. But there have also been long streaks of no TCA reported as well. Without a scientific method, these stories prove very little other than the fact that some people report finding corked bottles.

Our very low figure is related to to a certain cork from our provider, true enough. But these corks are widely available. So, if a producer wants to use corks with a low fail rate, they can.

For both you and David, there is another factor which might account for your perceived higher rate:

The % of wines under cork that you drink that are more than 5 years old.

In the last 5-10 years is when the major advancements in cork technologies have taken place. I'd imagine sooner at some producers than others. Those advances are thanks to pressure from screw caps taking market share, I can only presume. So, if you are drinking older wines, or even wines that were corked with older corks, this can account for the higher levels of TCA.

Check it out for your self. Start keeping a log of which bottles you find that are corked. I suspect that a high percentage of them are more than 5 years old.

Cheers!

I only put it in to counter-balance the old, wrong info still being used in these discussions, particularly the 5% figure that has shown up in this discussion.

I think I am the only person who mentioned 5% in this discussion and I actually wrote 'up to 5%'.

I am glad you have a very low level of bad corks but I think all that is proof of is that you have a very low level of bad corks, not that therefore someone opening a wine doesn't risk an up to 5% corked wine.

We opened 9 2001 vintage bottles last night at our tasting club. One was terribly corked and it was to be the highlight of the tasting. (not to mention the German Riesling whose cork had crumbled away to dust)

Last month at a winery tasting with the owner 8 wines were tasted. 3 had screwcaps and were good. Of the remaining 5, 2 were corked and one was faulty in some way but I couldn't lay the blame at the closure.

Being at the winery, replacement bottles were at hand so you could say that instead of 2 corked out of 5 it was 2 corked out of 8 wines closed with cork. (and I changed my mind about buying their wines to take home)

While annecdotally it seems to me that cork failure rate has declined with recentl vintages I don't think we can be absolute that, as consumers, we don't risk an up to 5% failure rate.

Hi Peter,

The estimate of 1-2% comes from Practical Winery and Vineyard here:

http://www.practicalwinery.com/winter2011/closure2.htm

This is based on actual scientific studies which you can review if you like.

The article linked to didn't have the source of their 1-2% claim, but I don't find 1-2% cheering but outrageous when it could be zero with screw caps or DIAM.

However, reality is that it is higher. International Wine Challenge reports corked closer to 3%
Based on a palate-shattering
sample of 13,000 wines, the IWC’s
sensory research revealed that 7% of
all wines tasted were faulty.
Closure-related faults – those
resulting directly from corks or
screw caps – were shown to be
the most signifi cant issue by far.
Probably the most widely recognised
show of these is cork taint, that unpleasant
mustiness not dissimilar to the
smell of wet hessian cloth, caused by
the liberation of the chemical TCA
from lesions within the cork. Until
recently most experts believed that
the cork taint rate was around 5%,
but the IWC results show the fi gure
to be closer to 3%.
see http://www.samharrop.co.uk/final_pdfs/faults-main.pdf

(Snip)The article linked to didn't have the source of their 1-2% claim,(snip)

Actually, it did: "Today, taint levels have come down to an average rate of 1% to 2%, depending on what releasable TCA (RTCA) level is considered unacceptable. 6"

The 6 refers to the article cited in the bibliography if you care to track down the study.

I am not trying to tell you how to feel about the FACT that the study cited in this well respected trade journal shows the rate to be 1-2%. I am only pointing you to that fact.

My point is to take the discussion out of the vague and subjective and into the factual/supportable claim kind of conversation.

People routinely throw around figures. I am the kind of person who asks: "according to which study?".

I guess you are willing to admit that the 5% figure is old?

I don't expect to change anyone's mind to favor cork over metal and plastic if they have already picked. My point is to keep the conversation factual.

Any producer who wants to can now source corks which have extremely low cork taint rates. If anyone here is getting high cork taint rates in recent vintages, they should contact the producer and let them know that they should consider changing cork suppliers, or changing to metal and plastic if that suits the wines they produce and is feasible for them as a producer.

Enough for me on this. Thanks. It was fun. See you all is some other thread.

Cheers!

For example, most of the corks we use have a taint rate of between .1% and .2%.
]

Curious what constitutes "taint rate" to you. Are you using a certain ppt rate? If so, what is it? While I agree cork taints seems to be better now that 10 years ago, if it's one in a thousand bottles I'm extraordinarily unlucky (and I'm not especially sensitive).*
But of course beyond TCA there's the even bigger issue of variable oxygen ingress. Wine from same case can show quite variably with age, and closure seems the best explanation to me.
Now, I think I'm fairly insensitive to reductive elements. So I'm not going to discount those concerns re screwcaps. But for me, cork has issues. And the romance of wine for me comes from the thought of the journey from vineyard to winemaking facility to cellar to my table, not what the sommelier does tableside.
cheers.

* one of my favorite things about TCA debates is there's always someone who says "this is all BS, I've opened X thousand bottles in last Y years, and only z have been corked!" (implying really low rate). So I'm at a dinner in NYC with one of those guys, and this incredibly corked wine goes around (I mean, basement full of damp cardboard) and he sniffs and says "wow, now that's earthy!"

Neil, I hope some others chime in on this, otherwise you will write off my opinion as corked - and I am sure it won't be the first or last time. But I have always detected TCA and every other flaw on the cork much more easily than in the glass, where alcohols and other volatiles fight for recognition. If you have never noticed anything significant on a cork, either your nose is flawed or you are drinking some pretty sterile wine. I know that sounds harsh, but it is a fact.

Covert, my nose is quite good when it comes to TCA. Not as good as Sue. I often serve as quality control at a large wine options competition, tasting about 180 bottle in the 3 hours that it takes. Most these days are screwcapped, but I taste them all. I have actually found 1 corked screwcaped bottle. Probably from a tainted barrel.