Corkiness and soft corks

[Paul Wagner]

Curmudgeon:

Your wish is my command. As you know, I used to be the Director of the CQC, so I have a bit of insight into the cork issue.

Here are a few thoughts.

#1. Anyone paying more than about 50-55 cents a piece for cork is being taken to the cleaners. Pure and simple.

#2. While corks have traditionally been graded on appearance,, with the cleaner, less porous corks being more expensive, there is NO evidence that these corks have lower incidences of TCA. In fact, because these very high end corks are rare, and may to to sit around in the factory for a long time, they may be slightly more likley to have higher incidences of TCA.

#3. Winemakers have always wanted the best, cleanest looking corks for their wine. This is what originally led cork producers to bleach the corks with chlorine. It has also led to the huge number of classifications of cork quality. WHile I was at the CQC, we developd an industry standard system that has only 5 classifications of quality. WIneries can insist upon this system from their supplier.

#4. Cork is a natural product, and has flaws. And while foodie is right, it is impossible to definitively test every cork in a bottling run, this is exactly the type of problem that mil spec standards and quality control procedures were designed to solve. Every winery should have a carefully conceived QC program for corks, and analyze each lot of corks for defects, including TCA. By following those procedures, wineries can reduce the incidence of TCA in their wines to well below 5%--Mondavi, Sutter home, Sebastiani for example, all claim less than 2%.

#5. Smaller wineres often have neither the laboratory equipment, expertise nor budgets to do this kind of QC...and often have higher incidences of TCA.

#6. There is a new process developed by BUrklin Wolf in Germany and a group of cork producers that not only limits TCA creation in the production of the corks, but also eliminates 90% of it is finished corks. Commercial quantities of these corks will be available within the year.

Paul Wagner

PS: TCA (2,4,6 Trichloroanisole) is created by any number of molds commonly present in the air at both wineries and cork companies. The mold has only to come in contact with any number of variations of chlorophenols, from chlorine to pentachlorophenol. These, especially the latter, are found EVERYWHERE including virtually every part of the winery or cork company. (Wooden pallets are all treated with Penta, as are most timbers.) The mold is killed by the chlorophenols, but attack it in a defense mechanism that attempts to metabolize the chemical. The by-product of this interaction is TCA. It can happen at every level of production of cork or wine. In fact, the current trend in winemaking is towards wines with higher pH (following ml fermention) and lower concentrations of SO2. This creates a much more habitable environment for mold, and as a result may, in fact, make the wines more susceptible to in vitro TCA formation.