How Wine Corks Age Sender: Ian

Allow me to sidetrack for a moment. My wife and I are members of RSPB (for non UKians, that's similar to the US Audubon Society) and they contacted the Beeb countryfile program, with an impbuttioned plea for the plight of the robin, whose nesting habitat is cork oaks. One wonders who was fooling whom!

I see these two issues (jobs and robins) as a sign that after decades of complacency, the Portuguese cork industry are getting seriously concerned and coming up with ever more desperate reasons to continue to use cork closures for wine.

I agree with you that cork has many virtues, and would be all in favour of its continuing and even increasing use as a cheap and effective insulant, for example. However, over the last 40 years, we've seen the proportion of present day levels. I'll not split hairs with you over whether current figures are 5%, 8% or 20% or more. My personal opinion is that with extreme care taken both in manufacturer and selection, some boutique winemakers can confidently say that the incidence of corked bottles is under 1%. I am pretty sure, however, that a winemaker such as Penfold in Australia, or Lurton in France can't afford the very finest quality corks, nor the care in selection of batches. If they have to rely on the cork manufacturer alone, I'm sure that figures like 10% or even over 15% would be more or less correct.

Others have commented upon the acceptability or otherwise of this, and the difficulty that delays in discovery of a corked wine can pose. I'll not add to their comments except to say that I share their feelings.

Leaving TCA contamination to one side, anyone who lays down wines will agree that with time, corks break down in structure. I've seen this start on corks at around 10 years, but it's generally agreed that the useful life of a cork is around 30-50 years, at the end of which the bottle needs re-corking. So again, cork is less than perfect for very long aging, because I hardly need to mention the risks involved in recorking.

Cork agglomerates are being put forward as being the solution. For short to medium term storage. The cork manufacturers are saying that new treatment methods guarantee TCA free closures. If that is the case, I have to wonder why disks of natural cork are stuck on the wine side in many such corks. Could it be because of the risk that the glue used is in itself a potential contaminant?

Why? Because it's not your personal experience. It isn't mine either, but then we may be lucky-careful in our choice of supplier!

No, no one serious confuses TCA contamination with the other ills to which wine can succumb. That said, it may be true that in some restaurants, clients order an expensive wine (too young?) discover that it doesn't actually taste very nice and therefore try to send it back as corked. It may even be that the sommelier-manager decides to maintain a polite fiction, rathr than risk a confrontation.

Why? To keep an industry that has manifestly failed to do its job alive? If there were NO alternative, then we might just have to do so, but there IS a perfectly satisfactory alternative. In fact there are two such. Crown caps have been used for aging vintage and late bottled champagne for MANY years with no discernable ill effect, and that they're used for a minimum period for ALL "methode traditionelle" sparklers. Research has been carried out into aging wines under Stelvin for at least 10 years, with no ill effects, and perfectly satisfactory aging.

I'm afraid that's a specious argument. No industry has a God given right to exist. You could just as well have used that logic against the spread of personal computers, one consequence of which has been the dissolution of the industry of copy-typists. You could have used it against the adoption of cars, which has resulted in the dissolution of the industry of bargees, amongst others.

That said, it is my opinion that much of the rise in TCA contamination is due to too early harvesting of cork, and to be fair to them, they couldn't have been expected to predict the rise in demand for cork, given the very long lead time needed.

Too little, too late, I'm afraid.

I am not sure you're right here. Firstly, cork manufacturers had no business introducing cheap corks if that resulted in the present levels of TCA, which is what is implicit in this last sentence. Secondly, I don't think it's correct. I think you'll find that prices have risen in real terms, especially at the top end of the market, while at the same time there has been a significant rise in levels of TCA contamination.

What I think is likely to happen in the cork industry is that as consumer acceptance of Stelvin becomes widespread, so more bottlers will switch. The drop in demand will reduce pressure on the industry to harvest too early. Faced with the possibility of the dissolution of cork as a closure, the manufacturers will eventually eliminate TCA contamination, and at that stage a new equilibrium will be reached. However, when all the new cork oak plantations begin to be fully mature, there WILL be a crisis of overproduction, and new markets will have to be found.

I don't know how true it is, but I read some time ago that bottle closures represents only 20% of the total demand for cork as a material. If that dropped to zero, it wouldn't result in the rest of the industry.

But as in all spheres of life, adaptability is the prerequisite of survival. The cork industry faces compebreastion, just as did many others in the past. Those that adapted, changed to meet demands and new circumstances and survived, and those that couldn't, didn't. It's up to the cork manufacturers to react to a new reality. They have serious compebreastion for bottle closures, and their existing product is far from satisfactory. They'll either change, or become a niche market, catering to an ever reducing number of diehard traditionalists.

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