Your experience in proportion of corked wines

Randy,
I once had a single malt scotch that was corked. The retailer thought I was crazy, but exchanged it anyway.
BP

Thanks, Robin.

You write: "Any judge could raise his hand and demand a second sample of a questionable wine (presumably, in most cases, corked), the total reject rate for all reasons among 21 panels and 105 judges was 4.2 percent."

A related question: was there any pre-screening done by the sommeliers? Or did they just open and pour, and rely on the judges to demand a second wine?

If there was pre-screening by people other than the judges, were those bottles included in the totals?

Thanks, Bob

[Robin Garr]

A related question: was there any pre-screening done by the sommeliers? Or did they just open and pour, and rely on the judges to demand a second wine?

If there was pre-screening by people other than the judges, were those bottles included in the totals?

Bob, I really don't know for certain, but based on the way that Union des Enologues Internationale competitions are organized, I would be very surprised if anyone but the judges made that kind of judgment call, so I'm strongly inclined to think that they just open-and-pour.

Ryan, bottles from the close out rack or budget rack should not be more prone to corkiness than the $100 bottle in the cool room. So, if you are having a 10% rate of bad wine, then you might be right. I myself have dumped many bottles of crap wine that I took a flyer on based on price, but I dumped them based on I don't drink crap wine even though I bought it. I am sure that you know the difference, but in case any guest reader might not, I thought I would post.

" ... judges made that kind of judgment call, so I'm strongly inclined to think that they just open-and-pour."

Thanks, Robin. I'm sorry to ask so many questions, but I'm really intrigued at the difference in the spoiled ratios between the judges and the two sommeliers.

Did any judges not challenge any (or very few) wines?

If so, would throwing out those numbers significantly change the percentages you mention?

Was there an inhibition to challenging a wine? I would think there must have been -- from the way the tasting worked as I understand your very helpful description -- glasses from the challenged bottle would have to be retrieved and re-distributed. That would significantly slow down the process, and everyone certainly was working very hard.

In addition, I've talked to a number of judges who believe they should knock down the ratings of wines that show some taint -- is that a factor is this judging?

As a general impression, Europeans seem to be less sensitive to TCA taint -- it's very instructive to read how rarely people complain about corked wine on Jancis's Purple Pages and how low the percentages of corked bottles that are reported. Is it possible Europeans are used to the taint from drinking wine from a much earlier age? Or, are folks in the US just overly sensitive?

I was struck by the fact you computed the two percentages throwing out the female judge's numbers. My experience has been that women generally are much keener wine tasters (and of course I have several biases at work in making this observation). Is it possible she was just more sensitive to TCA than other judges?

Again, I'm not challenging anything you write, Robin -- I'm just very interested in why the rates of tainted wines vary so much, especially the rates at two very wine friendly restaurants and at the major wine judging event you reported on.

Thanks, Bob

[Robin Garr]

Bob, I don't have firm answers for all these questions, but I'll try to distinguish between responses in which I know the answer and responses in which I'm making informed assumptions.

Thanks, Robin. I'm sorry to ask so many questions, but I'm really intrigued at the difference in the spoiled ratios between the judges and the two sommeliers.

Bob, you've cited sources at two highly respected culinary temples, but nevertheless, my knee-jerk response is that they're just plain wrong. The current taint rate for quality wines is nowhere near that high, and if they say it is, they're either exaggerating or giving you an estimate that includes all flaws, not just cork taint. I don't feel any doubt at all about making this flat statement.

Did any judges not challenge any (or very few) wines?

Most of us didn't. As I noted, the incidence of flawed wines was small, and one judge in particular called far more than her share. Generally, if a wine was obviously corked, several members of a panel would call it at once. (Remember, the 105 judges were divided into 21 panels of five judges each.)

If so, would throwing out those numbers significantly change the percentages you mention?

I think Ana's calls alone might have constituted 1 percent, or at least it seemed like that. "Comissione Numero Dieci demande un'altro bottiglia" got to be a running joke. I'm not sure I understand your question, though. The total number of rejected wines in the competition was 4.2 percent. Everyone assumed that cork taint was the most common reason, but this information was not given out.

Was there an inhibition to challenging a wine? I would think there must have been -- from the way the tasting worked as I understand your very helpful description -- glasses from the challenged bottle would have to be retrieved and re-distributed. That would significantly slow down the process, and everyone certainly was working very hard.

No, not at all. Every judge's table had extra glasses. Upon a demand, a sommelier would hurry out and pour another glass for the five judges in the panel. It only took a few seconds, and the judges would then have two glasses - the original and the replacement - to compare.

In addition, I've talked to a number of judges who believe they should knock down the ratings of wines that show some taint -- is that a factor is this judging?

It wasn't supposed to be. Judges were expected to reject flawed bottles, then rate presumably unflawed items on the Union des Oenologues 100-point scale, a very Franco-Italian system that involved filling in about 20 lines on a computer-readable scoresheet.

As a general impression, Europeans seem to be less sensitive to TCA taint -- it's very instructive to read how rarely people complain about corked wine on Jancis's Purple Pages and how low the percentages of corked bottles that are reported. Is it possible Europeans are used to the taint from drinking wine from a much earlier age? Or, are folks in the US just overly sensitive?

I'm not sure I see this, Bob. Again, a 4.2 percent reject rate is consistent with my own experience of corked wines on a day-to-day basis over recent years.

I was struck by the fact you computed the two percentages throwing out the female judge's numbers. My experience has been that women generally are much keener wine tasters (and of course I have several biases at work in making this observation). Is it possible she was just more sensitive to TCA than other judges?

You're jumping too far too fast to a conclusion, Bob. I said ONE judge called a very large number of rejects, and no one else - including other judges on her panel - did so. This caused some raised eyebrows. The fact that she was female, or the fact that she was Spanish, is probably irrelevant.

Again, I'm not challenging anything you write, Robin -- I'm just very interested in why the rates of tainted wines vary so much, especially the rates at two very wine friendly restaurants and at the major wine judging event you reported on.

Again, not to put too fine a point on it, the numbers you got at Daniel and Veritas are so out of whack that I assume the sommeliers either misunderstood your question or are wrong.

If my math is correct we are right at 2.4% corked bottles. It's interesting that of the twelve corked bottles we have opened ten of them have been Rieslings. That puts Riesling at about 16% corked!

Orrrrrrr...it could mean that the delicate transparency of Riesling reveals TCA at a much lower level than it takes to show clearly in other wines, Sam.

I'm seeing a markedly lower rate than I saw five or ten years ago.

As Robin said, stating the obvious, the overall rate is lower because I'm drinking more and more screwcapped and other alternative closures. But considering only those wines under cork, the taint rate is still lower.

I attribute that to the cork industry finally waking up and getting off its very fat ass and doing something about the problem, simply because it was a public relations nightmare for them, with the resulting loss of business.

I'd also chalk it up to wineries getting much pickier in their quality control.

AFAIAC, 2.5% is still far to high as an acceptable rate of cork taint.

Again, not to put too fine a point on it, the numbers you got at Daniel and Veritas are so out of whack that I assume the sommeliers either misunderstood your question or are wrong.

Robin,
My experience as well as that of a few other posters seem to be wrong and out of whack as well. Without some easy way of testing for TCA empirically, I'm content to chalk it up to TCA sensitivity, which is quite a separate issue from the overall quality of one's palate.
Being out of whack has never bothered me, so I'll stick with my estimate of 7-8% of wines closed with cork.
BP

Thanks, Robin. Two questions for clarification only.

Ross: Did any judges not challenge any (or very few) wines?

Garr: Most of us didn't. ...

Do you mean that some judges didn't challenge any wines at all?

***

Ross: In addition, I've talked to a number of judges who believe they should knock down the ratings of wines that show some taint -- is that a factor is this judging?

Garr: It wasn't supposed to be. Judges were expected to reject flawed bottles, then rate presumably unflawed items on the Union des Oenologues 100-point scale, a very Franco-Italian system that involved filling in about 20 lines on a computer-readable scoresheet.

We've discussed in other discussions in the past the apparent ability of TCA to "scalp" flavors -- especially fruit. If a CdR, for example, showed very little fruit, but had no detectable TCA, would that wine be challenged or judged and knocked down for

I'd like to consider some of your other points, Robin and perhaps respond to them later.

Regards, Bob

[Robin Garr]

Being out of whack has never bothered me, so I'll stick with my estimate of 7-8% of wines closed with cork.
BP

Fair enough, Bill!

[Robin Garr]

Thanks, Robin. Two questions for clarification only.

Ross: Did any judges not challenge any (or very few) wines?

Garr: Most of us didn't. ...

Do you mean that some judges didn't challenge any wines at all?

Er, yes, Bob. I thought I was pretty clear.

Do note that no one panel tasted all 3,500 wines. Each panel tasted about 5 percent of the entered wines, plus finalists. And if one person on a panel called for a retaste due to cork taint, there was no reason for the other four judges to do the same.

We've discussed in other discussions in the past the apparent ability of TCA to "scalp" flavors -- especially fruit. If a CdR, for example, showed very little fruit, but had no detectable TCA, would that wine be challenged or judged and knocked down for

Very likely. If no one judged a wine tainted because the characteristic aroma of TCA was not present, then it would likely have been judged low as a shy wine without much character. Bad luck for that wine. But at this point we're almost veering into metaphysical realms.

Orrrrrrr...it could mean that the delicate transparency of Riesling reveals TCA at a much lower level than it takes to show clearly in other wines, Sam.

Hoke,

Yes, I do believe that the subtle nature of some Rieslings play into the ease with which one is able to detect TCA. However, three of the corked Rieslings were so severely affected that the "wet dog" could not have been masked by a rot-gut whiskey.

"Er, yes, Bob. I thought I was pretty clear."

Thanks -- that's the way I read it but needed to be sure -- interesting group dynamics in play.


"If no one judged a wine tainted because the characteristic aroma of TCA was not present ..."

or more accurately because no one detected the characteristic aroma, right?

People describe a wide range of sensitivity to TCA taint in many of these discussions, Robin. Is there a "standard" among judges on TCA sensitivity; i.e. would the 105 judges have similar sensitivity to TCA?

One other question: winemakers entered their wines in this competition, right? Is any effort made to ensure that the wines are typical of their regular production?

Thanks. Bob

I think I'd accept estimates from sommeliers and some other ITB types rather than, say, mine or most consumers'. We consumers can become expert at catching the most obviously corked wines but sometimes not the more moderately corked ones, wines that have lost a bit of their fruit, wines that have lost a little of their finish, and so forth. The ability to identify TCA in these wines may come most readily to those who have previously tasted the same wines and have retained the memory of them, which is easier to do for those who tasted the same wines recently, as good sommeliers do. Sure, sometimes I buy wine by the case, but then often long intervals pass without revisiting it, and time dims my memory and changes the wine. And if you agree with that, then it makes sense that wine competition judges, who presumably are tasting each wine for the first time, would detect lower corked rates than Sommeliers do.

I am ITB and use to hit about 10% corked wines. I generally taste between 75-100 wines per week as an average. Much of what people bring to taste is in the less than $10 range. I was at a trade tasting today and saw quite a few bottles behind their tables that they said were corked. Now this was a Southern hemisphere tasting so Aussie, NZ, Chile, and Argentina. By a rough calculation it worked out to 8-9 %. I would just count the bottles that had real cork, not alternate. When you look at the top producers around the world who still use real cork, they check each batch and then reject some of the batches. I think this is how they get their percentages down. But there are many wineries out there that aren't as worried about things like this. But these tend to be the ones who produce volume. I think that the overall corked % will continue to drop but slowly. More and more wineries are using alternative closures like Stelvin, Diam, and many others. It will probably get a little harder to get good data on regular corks.

[Robin Garr]

or more accurately because no one detected the characteristic aroma, right?

I suppose that's so, Bob, but again, we're veering mighty close to metaphysics at this point.

People describe a wide range of sensitivity to TCA taint in many of these discussions, Robin. Is there a "standard" among judges on TCA sensitivity; i.e. would the 105 judges have similar sensitivity to TCA?

I don't really see how that could be measured, Bob. Judges didn't have to take a TCA test to be judges, no ... but all 105 judges were invited on the basis of their qualifications as enologist, sommelier or wine journalist. I would be amazed if any of the judges didn't know what TCA was or how to recognize it.

One other question: winemakers entered their wines in this competition, right?

Er, yes? How else would a competition work?

Is any effort made to ensure that the wines are typical of their regular production?

You mean, could a winery slip in a mislabeled ringer? As with any system of law and regulation, I'm sure it would be possible to cheat, but there didn't seem to be any deep concern about this. The same is true of all wine competitions, of course.

As a fair percentage of wines I taste are at least semi-mature, and a larger percentage of the wines served at Veritas are mature. So maybe better cork quality control is dropping % (but as Hoke said, still too high).

I do think TCA is easiest to spot in transparent whites such as Riesling.

As noted, I'm somewhere in the 4% range. But I am well aware that I am not especially TCA-sensitive. I find it funny when you have the folks who say that TCA isn't an issue because they only had 1 bottle in 1000, and bristle at the idea that they are insensitive, regarding it as an insult. We all vary in our sensitivites to various substances (witness the asparagus pee issue).

While I am not sensitive, I am aware that there is a strong correlation between the wines that more sensitive folks declare corked and those I find fruit deficient ("fruit scalping", as Michael Pronay refers to it).

[David M. Bueker]

When my tasting groups do older wines the taint numbers are virtually always higher. So there probably is something to improved quality control of corks.

Riesling is the easiest wine for me to spot TCA. Part of it is the inherent transparency of the variety, but there's also my level of familiarity with the wines themselves and thus knowing when something is off. I don't have any problem spotting corked reds though. I had one a few days ago.

Just as a data point, my Dad has extremely limited sensitivity to TCA. He has consumed eggregiously corked bottles and openly noted how delicious they were. He's very knowlegeable, but couldn't spot a corked wine if his life depended on it. For that fact alone he is a lucky guy. How I got the TCA detector gene (since he clearly has not got it) I'll never know.

So you think the bargain wines are more likely to be corked? I can think of reasons that suggest this might be the case, but almost as many that suggest it shouldn't

The page http://www.corkfacts.com/faqs.htm cites a few of the former that would tend to support your observation:

I don't mean to say that cheap aka inexpensive wines are more likely to be corked.

What I mean is this particular wine retailer had a display of about a dozen wines it was trying to get rid of, they were already offered at a reduced price and if you bought a case you got an additional 30% off. Wines were variably priced, from less than $10 to above $30.

What I've found is that these wines were being discounted for a reason, i.e. bad customer experiences. 2 wines were just plain poor, but at least 2 others were corked, which I find strange.

I still have a couple I'm holding out hope will be good and not tainted.

I don't keep careful statistics, nor do I report on every wine that I taste (especially not the corked ones), but my impression is that my rate is between 5-10%. Please note that I am quite sensitive to TCA, but also that this is just the :"obviously" corked bottles. There's the related question of the subthreshold levels of TCA that lead to wines lacking in fruit, but without a clear basis for comparison it's often hard to identify those.

Mark Lipton

This is broadly my experience - however many of the daily quaffers I open are recent local wines, and the screwcap-sealing rate in Australia is getting pretty high these days - the vast majority of current release whites (of all types) and significant numbers of reds are under stelvin. In fact, there are very few Australian wines sealed under cork within the last 2-4 years that I'd consider opening at this early stage anyway. On older bottles, the rate is as bad as it ever was - I've lost an 02 Mount Mary Chardonnay and 02 Tahbilk Marsanne at home already this year, and I'd have opened no more than 60-odd bottles by now - with at least a third of those under screwcap.
(And I'm only counting TCA wines, not prematurely oxidised, like last Friday's 98 Lovedale Hunter Semillon).

If I could retrospectively have my entire cellar sealed with screwcaps, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
cheers,
Graeme

Randy,

Bordeaux and California Chardonnay composes 95+% of my wine drinking. I would need to have drunk several thousand bottles to form confidence of proportionality, but my unofficial experience concludes that 0.3% is about right for both cru bourgeois and classed growths. Cal Chardonnay, on the other hand, is much higher, at maybe 5.0%.

Covert