Today I bring you the first post for a brand new blog dedicated to wine information. Now and in the future you can expect tasting notes, tips, tricks, and secrets. Hopefully, lots of fun conversation will occur amongst myself and the readers of this blog, and a community of wine lovers of all levels can enjoy discussing one of our favorite topics.
Today's Wine Tip:
Embrace screw caps and support producers who use them. An estimated 6-10% of all natural cork bottlings are infected with a bacteria called TCA (trichloroanisole). You may hear others refer to these bottles as "corked." It doesn't mean the bottles are open, but rather that they're "infected." Much of the infection is caused by chemical combinations used to clean winery cellars, unsanitary cellar practices at wineries, and cross contamination from a few tainted corks being washed in giant tubs with "clean" corks. The result of the tainted corks interacting with wine is a rather unpleasant scent and taste of mold and dirty-wet dog at it's strongest, and produce a rather lackluster wine with very little "pop" at lower levels. While TCA can still occur with screw caps, it's found in less than 1% of bottles. A pretty sweet shift for drinkers who won't be finding themselves opening special bottles with friends only to find them stinking of Rover and a moldy stack of newspapers in grandma's basement.
If you are unlucky enough to pop one of these funky monsters, take it back to the retailer ASAP so they can tell for themselves that it's a bad bottle. If they won't return your money, find a new wine peddler. Retailers and restaurants get their money back from the distributor who in turn recover the cost from producers and importers.
* To read more about cork taint, please click the title of this post for a link to a wikipedia article. *
Remember to tell your wine lovin' friends about this blog. It's open to everyone and I hope they all stop by. The direct URL is http://www.winoinfo.blogspot.com/ - Pretty easy hey? Good, now get 'er done!
Salud!
Evan. portlandwino.
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