SV: Vinet luktar kork!
Dramatic decline in cork taint.
http://www.amorimcork.com/media/filer_p ... btb_27.pdf
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Nedanstående är från en artikel i WB - Wine Business Monthly (dock från 2009)
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Riverside
Dan Berger could be considered almost the dean of wine writers with his long writing for both consumers and the trade, and he's also run the Riverside Wine Competition since 1982.
He said that 58 of the 1,806 wines at the latest Riverside competition May 1-3, 2009 were rejected, a level of 3 percent. He says those numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, though. "Fifty-eight wines were recalled, but there was no attempt at confirmation." He personally thinks that half a dozen weren't really corked. And half of those that were defective were manufactured corks--almost all on wines selling for less than $10.
Berger said, by comparison, in 1999, 8 percent were bad, though it dropped to 6 percent the next year.
Observers agree that the number of wines that are rejected for "cork taint" (TCA and related defects) has been dropping. This results from better processing and screening by natural cork closure producers as well as increased use of alternative closures, which probably reduce problems with TCA--though they may introduce other issues such as reduced wines. wbm
Cork Industry Data Shows TCA Levels Continuing to Decline
In the past few years, leading cork producers have spent considerable sums on preventative measures aimed at controlling and eliminating precursors to, and contamination from, 2,4,6-trichloroanisole or TCA, a compound associated with "cork taint."
Those efforts have been covered in detail in WBM, and there's a perception among winemakers that the incidence of TCA in corks has generally declined. The leaders vertically integrated their operations to control the raw material, improved their manufacturing processes and deployed advanced screening tools such as SPMI (Solid Phase Micro Extraction) machines to eliminate bad batches.
Taken together, these initiatives seem to have been effective though they haven't completely eliminated TCA from cork. (See "Insight & Opinion: Whatever Happened to Cork Taint?" WBM, September 2007, "Amorim to Introduce New Steam Cleaning Process for Natural Corks," WBM, September 2005 and "Signs of Success in Battle Against Cork Taint," WBM, June 2002).
Data collected by the California-based, Cork Quality Council, a group of producers, shows cork shipments continuing to see a reduction in TCA occurrence. During the past eight years the CQC says members have screened every natural cork shipment brought to their warehouses. Before they accept any lot into inventory, screening samples are sent to ETS Laboratories for GC/MS analysis of TCA.
For a typical lot of 100,000 corks, CQC guidelines require a minimum sample of 250 corks taken from a selection of at least five separate bales, which are placed in 50-cork wine soaks for 24 hours to extract releasable TCA. Resulting soaks are analyzed using a method that reports concentrations as low as 1 part per trillion. If one of the five soaks indicates TCA as high as 1.5 ppt, the entire lot is withheld from inventory.
CQC members conducted more 25,000 analyses last year. Their combined screening records over the past eight years show TCA levels are now 84 percent lower than results seen when records were first tabulated in 2001.
According to the CQC, the average releasable TCA level for natural cork shipments is currently calculated to be 0.66 ppt. The CQC screening protocol receives data with a minimum reporting limit of "<1.0 ppt." The group has agreed to treat these results as "0.5 ppt" for statistical purposes. Under this assumption, the statistical records cannot improve below 0.5 ppt. In the last reporting period, 93 percent of incoming cork shipments were tested at the <1.0ppt level. Another 5 percent had results between 1.0-2.0ppt. Approximately 3 percent of shipments were rejected by the CQC members prior to acceptance into inventory.
The CQC's members are Amorim Cork America, Cork Supply USA, Ganau America, Juvenal Direct, Lafitte Cork & Capsule, M.A. Silva Corks USA, Portocork America and Scott Laboratories. wbm