Wines & Vines May 06 cover CAN REDS AGE UNDER SCREWCAPS?

It seems that apparently over 30 years of independent testing has been done. Some testing has been done very secretly by the French, sneaky French. Who knew? Very few people obviously.

I'm not surprised about this.

From the History and Revival of Screwcaps written in 2001 from www.wineoftheweek.com
"On 10th August 1889, Dan Rylands of Barnsley in the UK patented the screwcap. It was some time, however, before this advance in bottle and jar closures was used on wine bottles ........ It wasn't until the introduction of the Stelvin screwcap, developed in the late fifties by the French manufacturer, La Bouchage Mecanique and now the registered trademark of Pea-Pechiney, a French manufacturer of bottle seals, that the seal became to be recognised as a quality product".

Laboratory trials started in the 1960's and in the early 1970's even Haut Brion trialled the screwcap.

Cheers,
Sue

John, if the author of the article is, in fact, Tyson Stelzer, then he doesn't need to rewrite his artcle: He is THE leading authority on screwcaps among us writing people.

John / Michael,
Yes Tyson does - or did - know about this page on my site. It was one of the first pages on the Internet to have anything on the background and history of screwcaps and hence it is referenced in the bibliography of Tyson's first book "Screwed For Good".
The page has also been referenced in other technical papers, but of course there are so many newer references to use now (sigh).
Cheers,
Sue

Can you please provide the link to the article? Or better still, a link to the original report from the Universtity of Burgundy? I have tried a google search in french but have come up with a load of rubbish.

This is very interesting news for those, like me, who are constantly frustrated by the uneven quality of older bottles, not just from TCA but also oxydisation, ullage, etc. From a vintage as old as 1964, I would expect less than one in three cork closed bottles to be of top quality, even if they had been cellared since youth at my home or elsewhere in a similar or better cellar.

Nevertheless I cannot help feeling a little scepticism whether we are getting a balanced report in an article authored by a known screwcap missionary.

John, John, John,

You will one day relent. If the tradition were to drink bad wine, would you preserve the tradition?

There is no romance in opening a TCA tainted wine--none. I go for the wine, not the idea of it and I want it drinkable, however that is achieved through the proper bottle cap.

Again, it's about the wine, not the cap.

I'm curious: have you encountered TCA with any of your bottlings?

I remember the first time it happened to me. After all the hard labor I had put into producing what I thought was decent wine, some Yahoo in Portugal sends some corks to America that wipes out my efforts in one traditional pull from the bottle neck! Made me want to find the culprit and pour the ruined wine down his throat...

John
Ye it's true that TCA can come from the cellars, barrels etc, as well as the cork. In this instance it's less likely to be random and would hit a large proportion of their output. ( noted!)

However 50,000 bottles and no TCA returns doesn't mean no TCA affected bottles. It may mean that some people grabbed a bottle of your wine and found it bereft of fruit and a little flat (not realising this was down to cork taint) - and determined that they didn't like your wine and resolved not to buy it again. I suspect less than 1% of wine drinkers can actually spot TCA in a wine. Even those that spot it might not return the bottle (I've never returned a tainted bottle, just writing it off as bad luck).

regards

Ian

John
Ye it's true that TCA can come from the cellars, barrels etc, as well as the cork. In this instance it's less likely to be random and would hit a large proportion of their output. ( noted!)

However 50,000 bottles and no TCA returns doesn't mean no TCA affected bottles. It may mean that some people grabbed a bottle of your wine and found it bereft of fruit and a little flat (not realising this was down to cork taint) - and determined that they didn't like your wine and resolved not to buy it again. I suspect less than 1% of wine drinkers can actually spot TCA in a wine. Even those that spot it might not return the bottle (I've never returned a tainted bottle, just writing it off as bad luck).

regards

Ian

John,

Ian posts sage wisdom and the real issue for producers: not really knowing what may be happening to their wine once the stuff is out there. I've sat amongst many wine consumers who blatantly blamed the winery for a poor wine, when I knew it was TCA. Conversely, I've watched many consumers down a TCA tainted wine without complaint

John,

I have a pretty low tolerance for TCA. Once at a trade tasting I walked up to a table of Italian wines. The distributor rep who was pouring gave me a taste of the wine I asked to taste. I lifted the glass and immediately smelled the wet cardboard odor, gave it a sip anyway--niente.

When I pointed out to the rep that the wine may have been TCA tainted he said, and I quote, "You need to learn to understand Italian wine."

My response was, "You need to understand that you just lost me as a potential customer, and not because the wine may be tainted."

Hello Sue & Tim,
Then this guy is a good actor. The way he writes about this is as if he never ever heard about you or any other information along the lines of research on screw caps. Thus I have concluded he is screwing with us all.

John,
It's called 'creative writing'. When you write about the same thing all the time, you have to change the way you say it (otherwise it becomes boring for the writer) - and let's face it, not many people actually realise that the French were the initiators of this closure on wine bottles, even if it is the fact.
Cheers,
Sue
PS - Can you PM me the article.

John, btw, did you get my message/mail?

As an aside: "Wines & Vines" seem not to be able to get their authors' names right. They call Tyson Stelzer "Tyler".

John,

I have a pretty low tolerance for TCA. Once at a trade tasting I walked up to a table of Italian wines. The distributor rep who was pouring gave me a taste of the wine I asked to taste. I lifted the glass and immediately smelled the wet cardboard odor, gave it a sip anyway--niente.

When I pointed out to the rep that the wine may have been TCA tainted he said, and I quote, "You need to learn to understand Italian wine."

My response was, "You need to understand that you just lost me as a potential customer, and not because the wine may be tainted."

Sounds like you have a lower tolerance for ignorant fools. How some people manage to get themselves in the trade amazes me.

Ed,

Among the most vexing things I have faced in the wine business is trying to strike a good balance when dealing with most (NOT ALL) of the distributor sales reps.

If there is one industry that needs some high level wine education programs, it is the wholesaler/distributor industry.

Over the past decade, some of the companies have finally recognized that wine, not liquor, is the future, but they still don't seem to train the staff well. if at all. I know for a fact that the company I workde for, which was considered a good wine distribution company, not once put the staff through formal wine education training. They did, however, throw a sales class at us that had been developed for other industries--while the sales concept applied to selling, sales techniques necessary to sell wine to retailers and restaurants was nowhere to be found in the program. In fact, I don't think the word "wine" was ever mentioned in the program.

Perhaps a few of them need a good copy of "Ethics for the New Millennium" by HH the Dalai Lama as well.

Ed,

That's an insider joke if I ever read one...

Sue,

just a a really little aside: It's "Le Bouchage Mécanique", not "La".