What a Disappointment When Wine Tastes of "CORK"!!!!

When wine tastes of cork

That musty, wet cardboard smell defined as cork taint reaches us when we uncork a bottle; it is due to a momentary loss of our nose's olfactory capacity.

Cork, derived from the quercia suber, has established itself since the seventeenth century as a bottle stopper due to its impermeability to liquids and gases, its elasticity, and its compressibility.

Chemically inert and unalterable in air, the cork stopper remains the best solution for preserving wine in the bottle.

The taste of cork, similar to that of wood, comes from natural aromatic compounds associated with certain corks and their treatments – washing and drying.

Between two and five percent of bottles show a more or less pronounced "cork taint."

During tasting, this unpleasant smell is perceived on the nose but even more so on the palate.

Poor quality corks cause various disappointments; the term "cork taint" encompasses numerous alterations of variable origin, for example:

- The putrid taste, fortunately very rare – about one case in one hundred thousand – is caused by yellow stains on cork harvested from the base of the trunk.
It is a butyric odor that is absolutely unbearable.

- The rotten taste, very similar to that of stagnant water, derives from unhygienic processing conditions and defective drying of cork planks.

- Odors of solvents and smoke (Guaiacolo) correspond to a damaged cork that leaks, promoting the growth of molds or bacteria whose presence is detected when uncorking the bottle.

- The musty taste represents ninety percent of bad cork taints; it originates from corks altered by poor washing using chlorinated products, thereby creating a substance whose perception threshold is very low – less than one millionth of a gram per liter – tricloro-2-4-6-anisolo or TCA. This compound contaminates the cork and the wine in contact with it.

TCA can also be found in barrels or old wood treated with chlorophenol; it generates the typical musty smell that is a false cork taint which can affect not just a single bottle but an entire production batch.

Unfortunately, when a wine has cork taint aromas, it becomes impossible to perceive any other aroma in the wine. This is explained by the fact that we are extremely sensitive to TCA, and its presence overlays all other characteristics, cancelling out the aromas and other pleasant sensations, rendering the wine absolutely flat.