Hope you all saw the neat article in the Times Dispatch featuring our own Cordell Watkins from Fleming’s (Wednesday’s Flair Section). Cordell was explaining screw caps to the newspaper, dispelling the notion that the only good closure for wine is real cork. So many great products are on the market now to replace cork. As we begin to see cork prices increase, and collectors continue to be bedeviled by TCA or “cork taint”, screw caps and other cork replacements are becoming more popular and more effective at saving our treasures. Statistics vary, but as many as 5% of wines using real cork are found to have traces of TCA ( trichloroanisole), a compound which produces in wine a musty, wet basement aroma. The smell can also be described as wet newspaper or wet dog hair to some. Regardless, these “corked” wines are unsuitable for drinking, and can be very annoying to a collector who has put years of waiting into a rare vintage. When TCA creeps into a winery, the results can devastate an entire years production. While the original bacteria comes originally from cork, it can grow in the winery and become costly to get rid of. Sources estimate that the cost of cork taint to the wine industry reaches $100 million worldwide annually.
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