BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Wine My Special Wine Destroyed by Cork!!

I thought this was really timely given our recent conversation on cork. I have been saving a bottle of Ruffino Gold Label Chianti. We had Italian tonight and I thought we should open it and enjoy it, and toast all the brave people from Sept 11th. As soon as the cork started to come out I knew the wine had been destroyed. It was completely atrocious. We couldn't even drink it. It really bothered me that here I'd stored that bottle in my wine fridge, looked at it when I took other bottles out, and here when I finally chose to open and enjoy it, it had been destroyed the entire time.

SCREWCAPS! SCREWCAPS! CORKS ARE EVIL!!

We had a Beringer '98 Knights Valley cab but it wasn't nearly the same.

I'll take out something truly special for later today. What are you drinking to toast to the heros and fallen of Sept 11th?

Corks are good, they just need to know how to make them. By the way, far from any wine can lie in the fridge for a lot of time, for how long have you had that bottle?

This is a wine fridge, it is especially made to store wine at the perfet temperature for as long as it is appropriate. This was a 1997 bottle so I've had it for a few years - not eons. It was YOUNG if anything. It's a wine specifically made for aging.

There is NO WAY that the storage had any effect on the mold in the cork. Cork Mold is a flaw with a cork that is there from the moment the cork is cut. That's the whole issue with TSA which is the culprit that causes 10% of all wines to be bad. It's an *inherent flaw* in the original cork, because cork is just tree bark and has mold in it sometimes.

The Wine Spectator says:

"Cork taint cannot be avoided, as many estates claim, by purchasing a supplier's "best" cork, because stoppers are graded and priced according to size and appearance. Suppliers' "best" (i.e., most expensive) corks will usually be at least 2 inches long and have few visual defects. But size and aesthetics have nothing to do with taint. "We do exactly the same sensory test and quality assurance for a six-cent cork that we do for a dollar cork," says James Herwatt, general manager of Cork Supply USA. "

Again, you may be drinking corked wines and just not realize it. Do you tend to drink reds? The Wine Spectator says:

"At (relatively) high concentrations, TCA is easy to recognize. However, the character of the affected wine is also important, as contamination that could ruin a delicate German Riesling might be masked by the earth and leather of a Ch�teauneuf-du-Pape. "

How sad Lisa. I'm now worried. I have some bottles of Chianti that I have been storing (properly). They have special significance to me and I take a bottle out to mark special occasions.

I also have several Barolos that I have been storing. I pray they all aren't effected by TCA. It's noted that Reislings that "don't see oak" are best suited for screwcaps.

Ruffino Gold Label is one I really enjoy so I tend to have a bottle of it in the cooler all the time. I drink quite a bit of non-Ruffino Chianti too (we like Italian food) and usually don't have a problem. So hopefully you should be fine, or at least you have a 10% chance of being fine <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The Beringer we had was fine, and the wine we opened tonight - a Les Secrets de Lafon-Rochet '95 Bordeaux was very tasty. We had it with some tenderloin. So I suppose life goes on and we enjoy the other wines we have. It was just pretty disappointing ...

It must be america, really. I guess you didn't understand me. There is no cork problems here. Noone I know has had a single problem, neither have I. At NO wine journal it has been written about this issue, hardly ever mentioned. It's just there is no problem with corks. If there is a failure, then it's an exception, too bad ... tough luck ... but noone really thinks of it as an issue and a tendency.

Must be very different in states. Either you use bad raw materials, either you don't know how to make corks, either the control is awfull.

Cork's size and appearance doesn't really have to do much with the price, it is the time and effort in making one that's expensive. Puting some signature on a cork, will make it nicer, but it still be the same bad cork, or the same good cork, and I don't believe that they charge a lot of money for the decoration of a cork. I haven't seen a single spanish or french wine with a non-cork tree cork. Cork is not eay to make and if the approach is not serious, then of course you'll get a 10% failure rate.

As for the chance that I've been drinking all my life a spoiled wine ... :rolleyes: ... well, I guess you don't really think that, do you? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> If there is something wrong, I'd most certainly notice it, and I actually think that a couple of years ago, I did have a bottle with a bad cork. It was bad, but the following day I opened the same wine, and it was great. Just a case of bad luck. I'd describe a failure rate here as 1% ... maybe even lower.

But you misunderstand! Most US corks - most corks in the entire world - come from Spain and Portugal. This has nothing to do with it being a US wine. It has to do with the US tasters *knowing this is a fault*. And yes, Europeans also know it's a fault, but sometimes they don't care. They have had wine with these taste problems for hundreds of years. To them, it's just a normal part of wine drinking. They like wines that taste like earth. If the wine also has a hint of cardboard, well, that's OK.

I think just just haven't heard about it because obviously in Spain or Portugal they aren't going to talk about a problem like this. It's a *world wide problem* and definitely happens to wine from every country in the world. I see I'll have to prove it to you <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Forbes.com:
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Here you go, corks didn't even really go into use until the **1800s**. So your "tradition" is less than 200 years old.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa122000a.htm

"Glass-blowing technology improved and in the early 18th century glass wine bottles with small bottlenecks made airtight wine storage possible. Wine could now be safely aged.

The English were the first to seal wine bottles, using cork imported from Spain or Portugal. Cork comes from the wood of the Quercus Suber or cork tree, a species of Oak native to Spain. Obviously, corkscrews were invented as an easy way of removing the cork from a bottle. "

Corked Portuguese wine in a tasting:

http://pw1.netcom.com/~lachenm/BWE00/ib.html

"Quinta do Vale da Raposa Douro '97 -- Made from some of the Port grape varieties: Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo) and Tinto C�o. Was this wine corked? Showed a slightly mildewy note on the nose, with some leather aromas. Muted cherry flavors, and quite tart.
No Rating (possibly corked) "

Cork problem costs huge money for a Spanish winery:

http://www.corkwatch.com/

Spain's Vega Sicilia Issues $3 Million Wine Recall

"Bodegas Vega Sicilia, maker of some of Spain's most prestigious and expensive wines, recently issued a recall of its 1994 Valbuena 5.� Reserva after discovering a problem with trichloroanisole taint, which causes "corkiness" in wines. The cost of the recall is estimated at about $3 million."

Note this is a *recall* meaning the wine was out on shelves before someone told them that there was a problem, probably after buying a bottle, hating it and trying to return it.