For The Love Of Port

Some current cork factoids* for those who still prefer the traditional wine/Port bottle stopper:

a. 21 million Euros - the sum of the international campaign in the budget of APCOR, to promote cork.

b. 2,277,700 hectares - the quantity of hectares planted to cork trees throughout the world.

c. 730,000 hectares - the number of hectares of cork trees planted in Portugal, representing 32% of the world's total and also, 23% of all of Portugal's national forest land.

d. 300,000 tons (600 million pounds) = the world's production of cork. Portugal accounts for 150,000 tons of cork produced.

e. 27.70 Euros - the price paid for a 15 kilo unit of corks.

f. 60% - the quantity of cork which is exported from Portugal, ranking #1 in the world (obviously not all of this goes into bottle stoppers).

g. 40% - the balance of cork which is used within Portugal, a huge number considering there are only 10 milliion people in the country.

h. 823.7 million Euros - revenues of Portugal's cork exports in 2008.


*stats provided by ViniPortugal.

Roy Hersh wrote:world.

c. 730,000 hectares - the number of hectares of cork trees planted in Portugal, representing 32% of the world's total and also, 23% of all of Portugal's national forest land.

d. 300,000 tons (600 million pounds) = the world's production of cork. Portugal accounts for 150,000 tons of cork produced.

These two figures caught my eye. Although Portugal only has 32% of the worlds total hectares planted, they account for 50% of cork produced.

This made me think of a TCA taint question...

Like most here, I have experienced many disappointments with ports that have been tainted with TCA. My understanding, which I acknowledge is very limited, is that most of this is avoidable if the cork producers follow sensible harvesting and manufacturing processes. One peculiar thing that I have noticed is that I cannot ever recall finding a port to be "corked" when sealed by a T-stopper. All of the experiences I can recall have been with bottles sealed with a traditional driven cork.

Is this similar to your experience?

Is there something fundamentally different about the cork used for T-stoppers and that used for driven corks?

Derek

I have had at least two bottle of Warre's Nimrod (T-capped) that were faintly corked. It was so slight that it required comparison to another bottle to be sure. The smell was "right" for TCA, although very faint. We drank them anyway, and filed the information away as an oddity.

With all the Nimrod I drink, I may be one of the few whose T-cap exposure is even a significant fraction of all corks experienced. Certainly, the percentage of T-caps corked is vastly smaller than the percentage of driven corks corked within my limited experience. (Says the guy with over 200 bottles waiting to go to recycling since the last trip in June or July.)

Recently at dinner in Pinhao the dessert had a side shot of Port, a basic ruby from Rozes that used a T-cork, to pour over the top of the dessert. Be being the Port nerd that I am, I tasted it first. It was horibly corked. The waiter didn't think so, so he brought out another glass from the same bottle. Needless to say it was still corked I finally handed it to someone who's been around Port far longer than me, Cristiano Van Zeller (Vale d. Maria, etc). He tasted it and smelled it and also confirmed it was corked. The waiter still didn't think so

I have had a couple of other corked bottles sealed by T-corks. but I must admit it's far fewer than regular corks. But I drink far fewer bottles with T-corks than regular corks so that may account for the difference.

If TCA will develop with time (Does it? This isn't clear to me.), then I would expect to find it more in driven cork bottles which we age for many years over T-corked bottles which are usually consumed with less time in the bottle.

Eric,

TCA is a bacteria (2,4,6- trichloranisole) which does not develop with time. It is either there at the beginning (bottling) or not. However, it may give the impression that it does get worse with time.

In a 2005 study of 2800 bottles tasted at the Wine Spectator blind-tasting facilities in Napa, California, 7% of the bottles were found to be tainted. I've read scientific studies that suggest between 5% - 8% of wine bottles are corked, although the cork industry states their case with a stat of 2-3% which is nonsense, imo.

Roy, if you had told me it is there or not at bottling I might have believed you, but you went further and stated that it is a bacteria, which it isn't. It is a chemical, the product of an organism and chlorophenols in the cork. Now maybe it is all there when the cork goes into the bottle, but I could at least conceive more being produced by the fungi with time.

Apparently there are ways to remove TCA from the wine, which I had never heard of. I'll have to give this a read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/dinin ... wanted=all

Well, that's the second time I've heard of using Saran (TM) Wrap to remove Corkedness. This time with at least a plausible explanation. BTW, when someone specifies Saran, they may mean more than just 'plastic-wrap'. Saran is a distinctly different plastic than the one used for most wraps. It doesn't stick as well, but it has MUCH more resistance to odors passing through the film. It may well also have a different affinity for 2,4,6-trichloroanisole than other plastics, so make substitutions at your own risk.

Roy Hersh wrote:In a 2005 study of 2800 bottles tasted at the Wine Spectator blind-tasting facilities in Napa, California, 7% of the bottles were found to be tainted. I've read scientific studies that suggest between 5% - 8% of wine bottles are corked, although the cork industry states their case with a stat of 2-3% which is nonsense, imo.

These numbers all seem reasonable to me. The differences may lie with differences in sensitivity to the taint, or to differences of opinion about how strong it has to be to consider the wine spoiled. My wife has a much greater sensitivity than I do. My wife will detect the taint in perhaps 5% of bottles, while I may notice only 2 or 3 %. I am also willing to drink a fairly distinctly tainted bottle if the underlying wine is good enough.

What would really be nice would be an unambiguous and unarguable test that could be done with a simple paper test strip for the presence of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole. If there was a color change, it could even say how badly a wine was corked. That would allow settlement of differences between customers and staff/owners of bars and restaurants without argument. I would think the industry would welcome something like this.

I also think the corked rate varies by producer. A producer buying the most expensive corks are probably getting a lower cork rate than those that use an inexpensive cork. As the old saying goes, "You get what you pay for." But realistically there are far more bottles produced that use inexpensive corks than top end wines with the best corks. So that very well may account for the difference WS got. After all they taste a ton of inexpensive wines.

This is just something I was told, which is to say that I haven't actually tried to verify it with research. So take it with a grain of salt, etc. However, I've heard that TCA is a byproduct of washing the corks. Whether it is cause by corks that haven't been cleaned enough, or by corks that have cleaning fluid residue left on them, was not made clear. Either could make sense, and would have similar results.

Whether a chemical residue or the byproduct of bacteria, it is most definitely possible for the taint to grow stronger with time as more TCA is leached out of the cork. Roy is correct, of course, that it's either there or it isn't (meaning that it isn't something that is created over time), but as the Port slowly soaks into the cork additional pockets of TCA could be encountered thus making the taint worse.

I seem to be immune to the stuff. I can honestly say (and Roy can vouch for me) that I cannot detect TCA itself - all I can detect are some side effects like muted fruits and a general flatness in the palate. On very rare occasions I can detect a hint of mustiness on the nose... but those are glasses that Roy can smell from across the room.