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

Cork taint affects review of Spanish wine:

http://www.wineloverspage.com/wines/wt121498.shtml

"Marques de Velilla 1997 Ribera del Duero ($7.99) - Dark reddish-purple. Ripe strawberry scent, jammy and fresh; ripe and juicy fruit, quaffable and refreshing. Pleasant sipping wine, though atypical of Ribera del Duero; substantially different from my recent tasting of this same wine on Nov. 30, prompting the supposition that the wine tasted earlier may have been slightly and then-unrecognizably "corked." "

Oh wait, this is really amusing. I'll post this one and stop. Hopefully I've shown by now that corking is a world wide problem that is pretty serious. Wineries around the world lose millions to this problem. But I think I may have found why you, in Spain, don't notice it. Apparently Spanish lower-quality wines *taste* like this anyway.

http://www.wine-people.com/marchapril99tastings.htm

"Red #13. Strong stench of musty wood. Corked? Or just a ton of old American oak? Jim says, "Horrible Spanish wine." Sounds like a reasonable guess to me, not to mention a great descriptor. Turns out to be 1989 Valfornosa Penedes "Gran Riserva"."

Ooooorrrrrrrrrr ... maybe it is that I'm drinking only the quality wine? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

But, as Lisa noted, it's not limited to lower quality wines.

"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."

It's a growing problem. It's not going to end until there is a definitive replacement to natural cork. This isn't going to be easy since synthetic stoppers have their own problems to work out.

Some information for all of you interested in spanish wine if any: Ribera del Duero, Rioja, Penades, and whatever other rigions are not considered to be the best. They make modest wine, with a modest price and expectedly modest quality. Exceptions do exist but are rare. By the way, Valbuena is not THE Vega Sicilia wine, it is made in the same bodega, but it's not THAT Vega Sicilia. The real Vega Sicilia (which uses the $2.1 corks) is called "Vega Sicilia Unico", and you can be sure that it's a different story ... and it's the only real exception from Ribera del Duero, probably thanks to it, the region got famous. So what, the '94 year of Valbuena was spoiled by the corks and? - The same wine is out ('96,'97...) and it is with same good old corks and is just great. Life goes on.

I haven't seen a tainted cork in my life. Not a single one. All the bottles I opened had the clean and fresh corks. The only problem I had once, was with a cork (I belive it was a wine from Rioja), I got it out and it fell apart into pieces - cheap wine, cheap cork, bad raw materials, not a big deal. :rolleyes:

Can you describe a tainted cork? Maybe I'm missing something huge here ...

All this movement with corks is invented, it's artificial. You tell a person who is into wine here that wine should be sealed with plastic and he will give you a funny look. There may be occasions, yes, bad luck, bad quality, whatever. Don't raise it to the level of world-wide tragedy. Parker says "good" only on those things he gets payed for, wouldn't trust him THAT much.

OK, I realise that my insisting tone is not very polite and may even be rude. But I live HERE, the third country in the world in wine production and I guess that I have a bit more knowledge on what is good here and what is not, as well as what wines you can expect to be of a high quality and what not. If you have such a high corks failure rate in USA, then the problem is in USA and not all the world.

Another notice on corks. The remark that corks are more expensive for their size and decoration, rather than their quality is a sign of ignorance. Does someone REALLY think that painting a cork is expensive? :rolleyes:

Not all corks are the same, not all trees are the same, not all parts of a tree are the same, not all production methods are the same, not all testing methods are the same, not all transportation and storage methods are the same. I guess that if corks really were THAT bad, serious wineries would have solved the problem already. I see them calm and quiet as ever doing their job.

As for now, I'm going to enjoy all the wine with "bad corks" I can. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I just can't believe you all think that corks are bad.

OK, I must be blind, I haven't noticed the first paragraph of your post, Lisa ...

First of all, it is USA that likes to get wine screwed with extra time in barrels, with extra strong of everything, tastes are unpredictable and are not popular at all here.

OK, so you there, in USA really think that you know more things about wine than the european winemakers and consumers do? You think that you know what wine should taste like, and here everybody is ignorant and stupid? You believe that countries that had been making wines before USA even existed are all misslead? That the tastes here are degraded and only the good specialists in USA can save the world telling the truth? Mr.Parker, the wine "spectator" maybe? That you and only you know what tastes good and what no? If so, I guess that arrogance that has long since infected all american society hasn't passed you by. This discussion is as useless as the one we had in "CARS" area. You see the world and things from a completely different angle. Not good, nor bad ... just way too different. It's not a problem of you being a woman or having some particular education or maybe job, it's just that you're from a different world to me and so am I to you. Not a big surprise, actually ...

ummmmm a bad cork doesn't look any different. It looks like a normal cork. This has nothing to do with the *cork*. It has to do with INVISIBLE mold inside the cork that affects the flavor of the wine. You CANNOT look at a cork and say "this cork is tainted". You only know by tasting the wine and tasting what the mold has done to it. The new, "off" flavor that has been introduced.

This is a fault that can be tested by any laboratory in the world. It's easily measureable in any wine lab. That's why wineries that find the fault do recalls, because they know that there is a problem. But since the problem is in the CORK you don't find out until that tainted cork has been in contact with the wine and the taint has leeched out of it.

My point was that you could easily have been drinking tainted wine, but because you don't consider the flavor that the taint causes to be "bad", that you'd just think this was a normal part of the wine you were drinking. Some people just aren't sensitive to the flavor of the taint.

But this is not a flavor *inherent to the wine*. It is a fault introduced by the cork. So this has nothing to do with US tastes vs European tastes. It has to do with the wine tasting like it did before it went into the bottle vs the way it tastes after the mold in the cork *changed* its flavor.

And if you've read all the posts I made, this is a fault that is WELL KNOWN by all European winemakers. *Nobody* claims it does not exist. I dare you to find me any winemaker anywhere in the world that thinks no wines are ever sold to consumers and affected by this problem.

You seem to be getting awfully emotional about this <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

First, learn what corking means. It's not a crumbly cork. It's a distinct flavor that an invisible mold in certain corks gives to the wines in those bottles. Research says that between 5%-10% of ALL bottles *around the world* have this fault to some degree.

Second, learn how it affects every winemaker in the world. This includes Europe. I posted the appropriate links.

Third, realize that all I was saying is that perhaps you can't taste this fault. Some peoples tastebuds simply don't react to the fault. And since the fault isn't strong like "rotten eggs" but is just like "cardboard", maybe you don't realize that the flavor *is* a fault in a given wine. Maybe you think it's an OK part of the normal flavors for the wine you drank. Maybe you didn't realize it was not how the wine was supposed to taste.

But you need to realize all those things, and then realize that the rest of the world - including winemakers in France, Spain and Portugal - all know about this mold, and know that it alters the flavor of a wine from what they intended it to be when they began bottling it. They don't want their wine flavor altered. They don't care if a Spaniard, a Britain, an American or a Brazilian drinks it. They just want it to taste the *way they made it* and not the way some mold spore decides to alter it.

Wineries that persue such high values, should learn to make (test) corks if they already haven't.

Of course bad corks exist, it is duty of a winery or corks maker to detect them. That's all I can say. I negate to drink a wine with a plastic cork.

I got your point more or less. I do not remeber any wine with an earthy taste or smell. They all usually have a fruity kind of smell and fruity tones. Never have thought of a wine as "rotten" or something alike. Maybe I'm lucky?

Excuse me if I got all personal and emotional regarding the USA matter. The issue is there, but I don't think it should be really translted to this topic. Have posted it after finishing 5 bottles of bad spanish wine (with friends of course). <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I guess you didn't intend to sound it THAT way, it just came out by itself.

Ah but see, they don't taste or smell "rotten". The cork isn't affected in any way you could tell. They can't test the cork beforehand, otherwise, believe me, the cork people would test!! They are losing MILLIONS of dollars in sales because of this. They only know after it's bottled when the wine is affected.

So the only way you know is either by ripping open bottles a year later to see if they're still good, or by listening to consumers complain. And it's not that they're complaining about "rotten bottles". Or about "crumbly corks". It's that the wine flavor has a hint of cardboard taste. Some people are sensitive to it. They taste it very strongly. Some aren't sensitive at all! They hardly even notice. So it could be that you just don't notice the flavor.

I'll give you an example. We went to Cain which is a very high end winery in Napa Valley. Their wines are around $100/bottle. It was a special tasting with 10 people that had just done a tour. The tour guide opened a bottle, sniffed it and then made an awful face and said it had been corked. She thought the wine was now completely undrinkable.

She passed the bottle around for us to smell. Most people there did NOT recognize anything wrong with the wine. They thought it smelled like a wine with a blend of flavors. They would have been happy drinkingit. I could smell the cardboard in there, but it wasn't a gagging smell. It was just one of the flavors. I probably would have drunk it too. But to this tour guide, who knew exactly what the wine SHOULD taste like, it was crystal clear that an extra, bad flavor was in the mix, and that it was far inferior to the "actual real" flavor of the wine in its normal state.