Poll on cork enclosures (wines over 10 years old)

[Chih Chan]

This is a simple poll to ascertain the frequency of faulty wines in bottles with corks over 10 years old.

It isn't just problems related to cork taint; it could be faults related to other forms of contamination from or because of corks, oxidation or poor ullage levels related to faulty corks, corks which have disintegrated, etc.

[sparky]

With all due respect, the results of your poll are not going to tell you much.

Cork is just one of the factors that affects the condition of older bottles, so unless you take storage conditions, provenance and a whole lot of other factors into account, all you'll end up with is a pretty graph with some lines on it.

In terms of robust research, it isn't...

[TiggerK]

Agreed, but if responders take efforts to eliminate any wines which may have been stored improperly at any point in their lives, at least it may be a slight improvement on the accuracy of his figures.

Not sure what the need for this is though, I thought it was fairly well established that cork failure rates (mainly TCA related) are around 7% or so?

Saw an interesting comment recently saying how the introduction of bottling lines during the 60's and 70's have seen a dramatic increase in TCA cork faults as there is no longer someone checking a large number of the corks by smell! Thought this may help explain why so few of the older wines I've had from the 10's until the 60's have been affected by TCA. Most TCA per decade percentage would definitely be late 80's and early 90's.

Cheers
Tim

[sparky]

Except that in my experience, there's a significant proportion of people who aren't fully across the underlying causes and will blame the poor disintegrating cork and call the wine 'corked' when it is in fact 'shagged' for a whole lot of other reasons and the cork is just the canary in the coal mine (to mix my metaphors).

Hopefully less chance that you're going to find that misunderstanding here, but it can't be discounted.

Wow - I thought the worst job in the world I ever saw was the guy who had to sit and watch the palletiser spinning around all day at the beer factory. I can't imagine what sniffing new corks all day would do to your sanity!

[sjw_11]

Hey Tim, Im pretty sure your right the technical studies show around 7-8% TCA impact ... what would be interesting would be a scientific study (somehow, perhaps by journal keeping) of what % of wines under cork ordinary consumers PERCEIVE to be corked/no good due to cork..... I bet its a radically different number and as Sparky suggests would capture a whole lot of faults other than TCA ... best limited to wines say <4yrs to control for other issues.

For a producer, thats probably the number which determines how big the problem is... I.e. who cares if 8% is corked if only 3% is perceived as no good??

(Ignoring the harder to quantify element of someone drinking a mildly TCA affected wine, not recognising that, and just thinking the wine itself is not good and hence not buying again in the future)

[Chih Chan]

It's just a little exercise to ascertain perceived attitudes towards faulty wines aged over 10 years attributed to cork enclosures. It’s more than TCA-taint or disintegrated corks. Ideal cellaring isn't my focus; real-world experience based on average conditions is more relevant. It’s perception of people in a knowledgeable community such as this.

[gap]

We bought 7 bottles of a 2002 Chambourcin from a Hunter Valley winery this year, which had been stored at the winery.

The first one was great, 5 of the next 6 went down the drain and 1 was salvageable.

They are now using screwcaps so hopefully the other later wines we bought will be drinkable.

[Mike Hawkins]

The vast vast majority of the faulty older wines I have are TCA related - so the stats are not really different to a 2 year old wine.

[Mike Hawkins]

We bought 7 bottles of a 2002 Chambourcin from a Hunter Valley winery this year, which had been stored at the winery.

The first one was great, 5 of the next 6 went down the drain and 1 was salvageable.

They are now using screwcaps so hopefully the other later wines we bought will be drinkable.

I'd say 80%+ of Chambourcin from that vintage at 11 years old would be OTH. I'm not sure screwcaps will make a huge difference.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Mike

[gap]

We bought 7 bottles of a 2002 Chambourcin from a Hunter Valley winery this year, which had been stored at the winery.

The first one was great, 5 of the next 6 went down the drain and 1 was salvageable.

They are now using screwcaps so hopefully the other later wines we bought will be drinkable.

I'd say 80%+ of Chambourcin from that vintage at 11 years old would be OTH. I'm not sure screwcaps will make a huge difference.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Mike

You're probably right

[n4sir]

I've kept a running tally for the good bit of 6 years, the following bottles include TCA and premox faults:

2013 - 34/261 (13%)
2012 - 24/193 (12.4%)
2011 - 52/408 (12.75%)
2010 - 48/545 (8.8%)
2009 - 58/491 (11.8%)
2008 - 69/465 (12.9%)

My average over these would be 285/2563 faulty bottles under cork, a 12.06% failure rate.

Cheers,
Ian

[Cloth Ears]

Except that in my experience, there's a significant proportion of people who aren't fully across the underlying causes and will blame the poor disintegrating cork and call the wine 'corked' when it is in fact 'shagged' for a whole lot of other reasons and the cork is just the canary in the coal mine (to mix my metaphors).

Hi sparky,

I've had a pretty good run on corks and have only had 3 failures recently. One you know of (at the previous Melbourne offline), the 2002 Hanlin Hill for the last offline (even more disappointing as I had the same vintatge under screwcap for comparison) and a Riesling about 2 years back (which I now recognised as cork taint as distinct from other factors). I agree that the stats won't be good, as I don't keep a record of successes and only really remember the failures - and most of them are when I really want the wine to be good. If I'm just having dinner at home and one of my bottles opens a bit funky, then I just go back to the cellar. But when you have a wine for an occasion and it flunks out on you - the memory chip fires up...

Unless I've got a clinic-ed wine or some sort of guarantee, I generally won't bother with a wine that's got a cork seal. Not any more. Just too disappointing when a good wine succumbs to the law of averages.