Cork Taint Is Too High at 8.5%
How is this not a reason for despair?
According to Cyril Penn , Editor of Wine Business Monthly and contributing writer to the San Francisco Chronicle 8.5% or one in every 12 bottles entered into the 2004 Macquarie Bank Sydney Royal Wine Show were corked…Contaminated by trichloroanisole, or TCA.
While TCA can get into a wine without the help of a cork, it is the cork that is the culprit in the vast majority of cases.
8.5%???
Everytime studies like this emerge winemakers and winery owners give more and more thought to how they can introduce screwcaps or other alternative closures to their wines without driving away customers who think such closures equal cheap wine. They don’t of course, but too many casual consumers think so.
The first step is usually to introduce screwcaps or fake corks to early drinking white wines. But it’s not easy for a marketer to put a screwcap on a $30 Cabernet.
It’s an easier move if you are making relatively little of this wine and you sell a majority of it to a loyal following through a mailing list rather than at retail or in restaurants.
Still…..8.5%??? That’s got to make it easier to abandon cork.
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