I'm wondering what would happen if an affordable method were available to check a batch of corks or even an entire winery space for TCA? From what I've read it seems that wineries know how it might form, what they can/should do to head it off and so forth but still we get TCA-tainted wines. I'm assuming that this happens because it's impractical to test the winery building (e.g. the BV experience) or every batch of corks before use.

Would wineries use a reliable detection method if one were available and reasonably priced? Also, how clean would such a device have to be before coming into contact with a batch of corks? Are they handled like medical equipment (sterilized) or more like kitchen utensils (sanitized)?

here's the affordable method some wineries use: soak a cork in a sealed container in a very neutral white wine (Chenin Blanc for example) and smell it later. Not quantifiable, but it can work.

The expensive way: GC and a tech who knows how to use it

The realistic way to look at this: corks normally come in 500 bag lots. In my experience, there aren't entire bad bags. The raw material for corks get so mixed up between Portugal and the producers, that by the time the corks are stamped out, branded, and bagged, they are totally mixed to the 3-5% bad rate we see in bottles. So even if you find a bad cork before bottling, that probably means 95-97% of the rest are just fine, and throwing away the entire 500 is throwing money away.

Some wineries do test on their own, or send samples off to analytical labs to test for them. However, there isn't much that can be done if one is found. Once you open a bag of corks, they need to be used pretty quickly because they dry out.

-Vitis Vinifera

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Member #19
The Great Northern, out of Cheyenne, from Sea to Shining Sea

What I've been wondering is why I've never heard about using dogs to detect TCA. Trained dogs are already used to detect drugs, explosives, agricultural contraband, escaped felons, lost hikers and pretty much anything with a uniquely identifiable faint aroma. Wouldn't a "drug dog" trained to detect TCA be a fast, efficient way to find a tainted bag of corks or other source of TCA in a winery?

It seems so obvious that I must have overlooked something making it impractical.

at 500 corks per bag, pretty much every one is tainted

that was one of my main points

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Member #19
The Great Northern, out of Cheyenne, from Sea to Shining Sea

Stelvin!!

Only, then you have to be really careful with the copper-fining as H2S isn't masked by the woodiness of the cork.

And NO! Screwcaps don't CAUSE a smell of H2S (as has been written about by a winewriter or two), it is in the wine.

I suspect that as well as causing TCA, natural cork also contributed positive attributes, such aas absorbing some of the reductive characters (H2S). On the otherhand, they also allowed SO2 to bleed off, if the bottle was upright (eg in a shop).

Stelvin screwcaps are magic, ask for them in a store near you!

most medium- to smaller-sized wineries dont have the option of using Stelvins, in the US.

There are only a few bottling lines equipped to handle them, though the selection of threaded bottle molds is apparently increasing quite a bit.

-Vitis Vinifera

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Member #19
The Great Northern, out of Cheyenne, from Sea to Shining Sea

We all have our burdens to bear.

Sorry to hear that Vitis, though the average winery in NZ is tiny by comparison to those in Napa. Somehow just about everyone has managed to access screwcaps that wants them.

As for the glass - if the demand is there the glass makers will make them - otherwise I know a company that will only be too happy to export them to you!

Needless to say, everything in the garden is not rosy. There are problems involved (dealing with the French manufacturers in August ... our bottling time, their summer holiday ... is character-building), there are problems in setting up the machinery to give a sound edge-seal
and if bottling cleanskins, suddenly inventory control becomes a problem.

A small winery here making five wines needs upward of 25 labels to accomodate all the export markets. With cork-closures it was simpler as they didn't need BAFT regulations (etc).

Meantime the agglomerate cork with the TWO cross-cut disks at each end (Twincork), has significantly reduced the TCA problem for some small wineries, by a function of half the problem (ie, to less than 0.6%).