Smelled the stench of TCA lately?

[Robin Garr]

A curious question: I realized the other day that it has been a really, really long tine since I opened a wine and got the familiar, frustrating scent of cork taint. My follow-up thought was that I hardly ever open a wine with a simple, natural, unprocessed piece of tree bark in it any more. It's either a screw cap, a plastic stopper - often stamped to let me know it's sustainably made with sugar cane or whatnot - and, increasingly, a DIAM or other brand of "technical" cork made from natural cork granules treated to remove TCA before being formed back into a cork shape. This has evolved gradually so I've hardly noticed, but I honestly can't remember my last corked wine.

Am I an outlier on this? I don't drink wine as often as I did - typically one per week to review in the 30 Second Wine Advisor - and shopping usually in the $10 to $30 range for bottles in current release, I may be fishing in different waters than some of you. But I'm curious if you're noticing similar results when you open recently produced bottles.

Am I an outlier on this? I don't drink wine as often as I did - typically one per week to review in the 30 Second Wine Advisor - and shopping usually in the $10 to $30 range for bottles in current release, I may be fishing in different waters than some of you. But I'm curious if you're noticing similar results when you open recently produced bottles.

So is your assumption here that TCA is less common in less expensive wines? I'm not sure of the science, but I remember hearing that TCA could be more common in less expensive wines, at least to the extent they used cheaper cork that combined cork from multiple trees, thereby increasing the probability that some TCA was involved. But not sure if that's true.

Otherwise, I don't really keep records on my TCA rate. (Could probably back it out from notes, but...) I'm also mostly opening wine on the weekend, so incidence from any given month is unreliable and it comes and goes in waves throughout the year. But, just when I think I've been in a clear patch, I'll get a few. So it definitely still exists!

[Robin Garr]

Hi, Rahsaan! I'm actually not so much making assumptions as seeking information from others' experience. I can say, though, that the terrible old corks made of mixed granules from many corks glued together to almost guarantee a TCA problem has all but ended. You'll rarely see them any more, but it's easy to mistake a DIAM/etc technical cork for them because they're also made from cork granules, but those have been treated to remove TCA before they're formed. So, similar look, but vastly different chance of a ruined wine.

Again, though, I'm just asking if anyone else has noticed a significant reduction in corked wines lately, with the exception of older wines made before technical corks and screw caps took over a much larger share of the market from whole natural and untreated agglomerated corks.

[David M. Bueker]

I do think the incidence is lower. Exactly why is not clear, but probably a combination of factors. With the advancement of technical corks there has been more pressure on the producers of "real" corks to clean up their act so to speak. For me it likely has more to do with the fact that a large number of the domestic producers I follow from year to year are using more DIAM and DIAM adjacent closures than regular corks. Then there's Austria, where screw caps have made some significant inroads. When I open recent vintage French or German wines (the vast majority are still using regular corks, with the exception of lower priced wines) I do perceive that the TCA rate is lower.

I would say the incidence of TCA in recent release wines is much less. I've never experienced corked wines with a DIAM or a screwcap. And I think after bad publicity/pressure the cork industry upped quality control with conventional corks. So I still get 5+ % corked in 20th century wines, but can only remember 3-4 examples of recent release wines that have been corked (though I'd guess 75+% of what I open use legacy-style corks.
Personally I wish everyone would just switch to Diam style, which never seem to lead to corked, reduced, OR premox.

[David M. Bueker]

Personally I wish everyone would just switch to Diam style, which never seem to lead to corked, reduced, OR premox.

I almost 100% agree with you, except that I have seen some reduction in wines under DIAM, but I believe that was producer-driven. It was some Goodfellow Chardonnay (IIRC, 2017s) that had serious "over-Coche" as I jokingly named it.

Do you remember which Diam?I think the D30s are screwcap level lack of oxygen transmission, which could easily lead to reduction with sulphur.

[David M. Bueker]

Do you remember which Diam?I think the D30s are screwcap level lack of oxygen transmission, which could easily lead to reduction with sulphur.

Pretty sure it was D30.

p.s. that Massican wine I mentioned in another thread was under DIAM3!

Am I an outlier on this?

No. We open a bottle every night and I didn't open a corked wine in 2023.

Most wines we have are closed with screwcaps, plastic bungs or DIAM. Even some inexpensive wines have been closed with DIAM, but those we've had with traditional corks in the past year have been TCA free.

In the last hour I've had a delivery of 8 inexpensive wines for raffles, 6 different. 6 have screwcaps.

Burgundy, the Rhone valley, and probably other French fine wine regions went through a very bad patch of cork-related problems (mainly TCA) in the 1990s. Over the years I've had a distressingly large number of carefully-aged treasured bottles that were badly corked when opened many years later. I don't recall any problems with bottles of a vintage date past 2000.

-Paul W.