Poll: How often are your wines corked?

[JimHow]

Poll: How often are your wines corked?
(I was thinking of adding "cooked" in there as well but I don't want to get too complicated.)

[Comte Flaneur]

About one in eight.

[Racer Chris]

Maybe one in 50, probably quite a bit less.
Nearly all my wines were bottled after 2009. Most have natural cork closures.

[Claret]

TCA avoidance in corks has gotten much better in recent years. More screwcaps and Diam too. I find a very small percentage with a high sensitivity.

[marcs]

I would say a low percentage -- well under 10% -- but a bit more than 2%. 2% would be one out of every fifty bottles. I feel like it's more like one out of every thirty or so.

I do drink a lot of older bottles though, and IME older bottles are more likely to be corked. Don't know whether being corked is more detectable in older bottles for a somewhat low-sensitivity person like me (less fruit and tannin to compete) or else it's that the technology to avoid this has genuinely improved. If it was younger bottles only I would be down below 2% for sure.

This is a somewhat poorly designed poll IMO -- it should have offered much more gradation between 2% and 10%. That's a huge range, from one out of fifty to one out of ten. Also, the higher ranges in the poll are pointless to include. What is the reason to have a choice for "greater than 30%"? The wine industry could not exist if a third of all bottles were actually corked!

[Gerry M.]

Over the last 25 years years I've probably had about a dozen corked bottles in total. Cooked wines are another subject where heat damage from extremely poorly kept bottles have come up a few times are year. Almost all have been from auction purchases.

[BordeauxNut]

Over the last 25 years years I've probably had about a dozen corked bottles in total. Cooked wines are another subject where heat damage from extremely poorly kept bottles have come up a few times are year. Almost all have been from auction purchases.

One of two things is true:

(1) You don't drink much wine.
(2) You cannot distinguish TCA in wine

I used to drink with a guy at a tasting who would wax poetic about terroir every time a wine was corked. To this day, he thinks we are all crazy.

No offense intended. And, FWIW, I would guess my percent of corked wines with natural closures to be in the range of 8-10%.

Cheers.

[JimHow]

I would say my experience with corked wines is about the same as Gerry’s.

[jal]

A lot more cooked wines than corked for me.
Maybe I'm not that sensitive, maybe I've been lucky, and maybe I've been drinking them too young lately. The percentage is higher in older vintages btw.

[stefan]

8-13%, Ian and Izak? If you are correct, you must be unusually sensitive to TCA. Even my bloodhound son, stefanJr, does not claim that such a high percentage of bottles are discernibly corked. (He worked with TCA in his lab once and became supersensitive to it as a result.)

My guess is that about 2% of all wines are so TCA infected that anyone familiar with TCA will detect the taint, and that another 3-4% are infected enough that the bottle is rendered off and people who are very sensitive to TCA can detect the TCA. Does anyone know of studies to determine what percentage of bottles are infected with at least 2 (or 3 or 4) parts per trillion of TCA? I have read of relatively easy tests sensitive enough to detect a few parts per trillion (maybe even one ppt--see below; I am not sure about that or what mechanism the Cork Quality Council used).

The wikipedia article on cork taint mentions:

>>
In 2013, the Cork Quality Council ran over 25 thousand tests. The results, compared with data from eight years ago, show a sharp reduction in TCA levels, of around 81 percent. In the last test, 90 percent of samples of natural cork stopper shipments showed values of under 1.0 ppt and only 7 percent had showed results of 1.0-2.0 ppt.[2]
>>

So it does sound like controls for TCA on corks are getting better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_taint

[Blanquito]

I concur that TCA incidence has gone way down in the last 20-30 years. 1970’s and 80’s European wines have much higher % of TCA than “now”.

California has always seemed to be corked far less often then old world wines.

[AKR]

I have a few every year, out of a case to case and a half consumption per month. Sometimes I do the saran wrap salvage attempt if its a bottle I don't have any more of, or can't bear pouring out, but that mostly just removes the grossly objectionable parts. I'm lucky that I'm not overly sensitive, but maybe as I get older I'm picking it up just a little more.

Sometimes bottles that underwhelm me, but were still drinkable to my yak palate, end up being more plainly wrong when I can try a sound bottle.

I've had tremendous ill luck with one estate and their corks - Faugeres. Whenever I open one of their wines, it is subjected to extreme vetting.

[DavidG]

Around 4% for me. Maybe less for wines produced since 2010 but I don’t drink enough of them for a statistically meaningful sample. I’m pretty sensitive to the smell so I think I can usually identify it. There are some wines that seem oddly stripped of aroma and flavor in which I can’t pinpoint any flaw. I suspect TCA below my threshold in those cases. If I counted them I would say probably 5%.

Differences in sensitivity usually account for the disagreements in groups. And there’s probably an element of suggestion in the situations Jim describes of whole tables disagreeing.

The return issue is difficult. By rights a refund should be available for any corked bottle regardless of age. Retailers and restaurants should be able to get credit from the distributor, who should ultimately get credit from the winery. And retailers should trust their customers. Unless they see a pattern suggestive of abuse, at which point they could ask for the cork or remaining wine to be returned. But on top of differences in sensitivity leading to disagreement, in many cases none of that is logistically simple and may not be possible. A frustrating and unsatisfactory situation.

My cooked bottle percentage is very low since I stopped buying older wines from retailers who seemed to have problems and I don’t dabblein the auction market.

[JimHow]

Indeed, David, when a wine is completely flat -- I'm not talking just "closed," I initially think about it being flawed.
A small sample in this poll, I realize, but I find it interesting that a substantial percentage find the incidence of cork in only one out of every 50+ bottles... which is my experience.

[Comte Flaneur]

8-13%, Ian and Izak? If you are correct, you must be unusually sensitive to TCA. Even my bloodhound son, stefanJr, does not claim that such a high percentage of bottles are discernibly corked. (He worked with TCA in his lab once and became supersensitive to it as a result.)

My guess is that about 2% of all wines are so TCA infected that anyone familiar with TCA will detect the taint, and that another 3-4% are infected enough that the bottle is rendered off and people who are very sensitive to TCA can detect the TCA. Does anyone know of studies to determine what percentage of bottles are infected with at least 2 (or 3 or 4) parts per trillion of TCA? I have read of relatively easy tests sensitive enough to detect a few parts per trillion (maybe even one ppt--see below; I am not sure about that or what mechanism the Cork Quality Council used).

The wikipedia article on cork taint mentions:

>>
In 2013, the Cork Quality Council ran over 25 thousand tests. The results, compared with data from eight years ago, show a sharp reduction in TCA levels, of around 81 percent. In the last test, 90 percent of samples of natural cork stopper shipments showed values of under 1.0 ppt and only 7 percent had showed results of 1.0-2.0 ppt.[2]
>>

So it does sound like controls for TCA on corks are getting better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_taint

I am usually pretty insensitive to TCA. Round a table of experts I am usually the last to notice it. I have had the ignominious distinction of bringing two bottles of corked red burgundy to a lunch in London. It happened last year. One was a Daniel Rion one was a Louis Remy. Sometimes I only realise the wine is corked when I am half way through the bottle. Often the wine tastes a bit flat and lifeless at first then it gets worse. There are different degrees of corkiness. I have more problems with corked than cooked wines. I drink a fair bit of older stuff, where the incidence tends to be higher, notably with Italian wines. I think it is more a problem with old world and older wines. Last week the Tignanello 1985 was heavily oxidised because it probably had been standing up for too much of its life. I don’t think it was corked, but it may have been. I would say one in eight bottles I open are flawed in some way and close to one in ten corked.

[JimHow]

Often the wine tastes a bit flat and lifeless at first then it gets worse.

Exactly.

[sdr]

About 1 in 5 of my bottles of old Bordeaux are corked. It’s unfortunately not that rare to open two in a row that are both corked.

The older the bottles, the higher the chance of corkiness; stuff less than 10 years old is almost always okay, so closures have improved.

I am very insensitive to TCA so usually rely on others to tell me my wine is spoiled.

The local shop will take back corked bottles for a refund - but only if he can be reimbursed by the distributor or winery. He asks for the cork so he can send it back. They apparently grind it up and have a solvent to extract the TCA.

As for cooked, very little problem from any auction.

Stu

[stefan]

>>
About 1 in 5 of my bottles of old Bordeaux are corked.
>>

Wow! If you had said "flawed" instead of "corked", Stuart, I would understand, but 20%? This is way above any figure I have heard or read about. So your merchant accepts back 20% of the bottles you buy? It is a real plus to deal with such a guy.


IIRC, François said that the percentage of old bottles he opens that are corked is rather low--maybe 2%? Other flaws are much more common and he tries to deal with them with "slow oxidation". I guess he just pours out the corked bottles rather than use the Saran wrap method--slow oxidation will of course do nothing for a corked wine.

[JimHow]

I’d be curious to know what JScott’s percentage is.
I recall seeing his notes on cellar tracker a while back and it seemed like he had a VERY high incidence of corked bottles.

[AlohaArtakaHoundsong]

Considering that many connoisseurs are obsessive about wine, pricing, storage and ratings, I'm surprised that no one seems to have actually documented their experience with corked or suspected corked wines. That would lead me to believe that it is less frequent than we relate when asked. Having said that, even a five percent defect rate would be unacceptable in any type of product or service. Yet, the industry seems to accept it.

I will usually spot a corked bottle immediately on opening. Occasionally I have a false positive but rarely do I miss any (although recognizing corked bottles that you don't recognize is problematic.)

[JimHow]

I think this was an interesting little poll, if I say so myself.
A very small sample, obviously, but it is a BWE sample, which gives it greater weight.
For me, I read a lower incidence of cork defect than the norm that you might find on, say, cellartacker, or, as I recall from the "more serious" web sites like Berzerkers and Squires when I used to check in once every 6 months or so....

Long live BWE.

[DavidG]

Art, I’ll plead guilty to the obsession you describe. I log every bottle on CellarTracker and could, if I were motivated enough to take the time, go back and calculate corkage rates by year, producer, region, etc. I'd have to look to see if there’s a way to search on flawed bottles or if I’d have to go one TN at a time. But the numbers are small to begin with so splitting them up further would be meaningless from a statistical perspective. My rate for German wines is lower than for Bordeaux but I drink much less German wine so that could be a statistical anomaly. I drink enough Champagne to be confident of the lower rate for Champagnes.

Even if I had statistically valid samples, I'm not sure it would change my purchase or drinking patterns. I like Bordeaux and even if the failure rate was double that of Napa it wouldn’t make me dump Bordeaux for Napa. OTOH, the failure (premox) rate for white Burgundy was so high that it stood out without having to do any analysis. I love white Burg, but not enough to suffer the premox tax.

[DavidG]

So there is a way to search on flawed bottles in CT and you’re right Art. I’ve overestimated. My rate of corked bottles is only 1%. That’s probably low because a lot of TNs were imported from my old cellar mgt system and they didn’t have a discrete "flawed" check box so they would need to be searched note by note. But if I look only at the last 5 years the rate is still only 2%. I guess the disappointment at opening a bad one just stands out.

[Racer Chris]

So there is a way to search on flawed bottles in CT

I found 7 spoiled out of 910 consumed in my CT file.
3 were returned and 4 were not.

[JimHow]

7 divided by 910 = 0.0077%.

I would say that is pretty much about the same as my experience.

[Racer Chris]

7 divided by 910 = 0.0077%.

I would say that is pretty much about the same as my experience.

You need to move the decimal over two positions if you use the percent sign, Jim.

[marcs]

7 divided by 910 = 0.0077%.

I would say that is pretty much about the same as my experience.

You need to move the decimal over two positions if you use the percent sign, Jim.

it's well known that people go into the law because they have a hard time with math

[Tom In DC]

But they are very good at calculating 30% of large numbers!

[JimHow]

Um, 33.33%.

[AlohaArtakaHoundsong]

40% if appealed.

[JimHow]

That's negotiable. I just gave my lawyer 50% in a suit against another firm because he did a good job.

[JimHow]

I'm just a country lawyer from Maine.

[JCNorthway]

OK, veering away from lawyers' fees and back to corked bottles. I probably have the data in my spreadsheet of wines drunk, but it would not be easy to find information on corked wines very easily. So making a guess, if I think about every 100 bottles I drink, on average no more than 1 is corked. I also think that the number of corked bottles I found 15-20 years ago was higher than the wines I am drinking today. As others have commented, I think the wine makers and cork producers have improved the quality of their processes to reduce the number of bad bottles. I will say that I had a fair number of corked bottles of French wines from the early 80s to early 90s - mostly Rhones as I recall.

[AKR]

There are a lot of producers who should be using modern closures on their bottlings, rather than inconsistent tree bark.

If the wine is not intended to evolve and is unlikely to be saved beyond 3-4 years, I think the default setting should be screwcap or comparable.

Most Cotes du Rhone fall into that camp, even if there are maybe 25-50 that are ageable for 10+ years.

[AlohaArtakaHoundsong]

Are any of the top/major Box producers experimenting with screw caps? I ask because what little I've bothered to read emphasizes that it is not the closure but the oxygen in the headspace that determines how the wine ages. I have no problem with screw caps and assuming they maintain their integrity over time they would seem to have significant advantages over cork closures, which, regardless of the TCA issue, tend to fail in one way or another (leakage, structural disintegration) in the longer term.

[DavidG]

During our dinner at Margaux in 2005 Paul Pontailler told me they had been experimenting with screwcaps but wanted long-term (decades) experience before considering their use commercially. Thomas Duroux at Palmer said some old studies in Burgundy showed screwcaps worked fine but he wasn’t interested in using them due to consumer perception.

[stefan]

Since coming to LA on April 29, two of the 30 bottles we have had have been corked, a 1990 Gloria and a 2009 Ferriere. Lucie did not notice and I did not draw her or our guests' attention to the Gloria. During the second glass of the Ferriere, I told Lucie it was slightly corked. She had not noticed, but immediately realized that I was correct. The taste of both wines were good enough that I could drink a couple of glasses as long as I did not smell the wine. If we were back home I would have replaced both bottles, but since we are short of wine here and others really liked the wine I kept quiet. BTW, Lucie and our guests (my sister and her husband) drink a lot of wine, but none are very sensitive to TCA. The thing is that wine with a low level of TCA can taste pretty good. I cannot taste TCA if the level is low but generally do detect it in the bouquet.

This small sample is consistent with what I think is my long term experience.

[stefan]

We now have had 4 corked wines of just under 50 we have drunk in LA.

[DavidG]

Stefan, it looks like your "monitored" experience is pretty close to your estimate.

I was surprised to find that my CT records showed a much lower rate (1%) than I had estimated (4%). Last night I was looking at some TNs and found a couple that said "corked" but where I hadn’t checked the "flawed" box. So my use of CT to record corked wines has not been consistent, and my rate is likely somewhere between 1 and 4%.

[Racer Chris]

I was led to believe the historical average of corked wine was close to 10%, which is consistent with your experience Stefan.
Fortunately it seems that cork management has improved significantly in the recent past.