Is your bottle corked?

Wine is a natural product that 'lives' and it is, therefore, possible that the quality deviates at any time. We will do our utmost to find a good solution, so please contact us immediately. The problem with cork or TCA is that the cause does not always have to come from the bottle. The TCA can also float around in your cellar or storage cupboard and can come from a lesser cork. The bacteria can penetrate through the wine while it is stored, so it can also be caused by an existing bottle (s). If you have cork regularly, you should empty your cellar and disinfect it properly, because the bacteria circulate in the air. Also, regularly changing the filter in a wine storage/fridge should not be overlooked.

We always try to solve this the best way we can, and if the wine has been purchased recently, the likelihoods are that the purchased wine is not good. However, with purchases made a long time ago, this is not possible. We always try to solve this, but we can not give a guarantee. With the more expensive bottles, it often means that you have to send the bottle to us. We can measure the TCA, and if in doubt, we send it to the winery, where we have it analyzed by them (by the way, we do this in all cases if the complaint is somewhat broader, such as; "The wine is not good" or "the wine is oxidized"). The goal is to drop by or send the wine, and if it is confirmed by us and/or the winery, we will reimburse the bottle and the shipping costs. As you can understand, it is difficult to arrange what to do with complaints where the product is no longer present.

What is Cork

Wine may have an off-flavor caused by contamination by a fungus or bacteria that forms 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), which is referred to as "Cork". The contaminated wine might have the smell of a musty or damp cellar due to the TCA bacteria and therefore does not taste good. The TCA bacteria can penetrate through a bad cork from outside the bottle to the wine while it is stored. Estimates of the percentage of wine bottles with the stale cellar smell range from 1% to 15%.

Just because cork floats in the glass does not mean that the wine is contaminated, as is commonly believed. Usually, this is the result of a Cork that is too dry or a badly opened bottle. This does not affect the taste. A little mold on the top of the cork is nothing to worry about either.

The natural cork is often seen as the culprit for the problem of the bad taste in wine. But this is unjustified. It has led many winemakers to use more stoppers made from plastic, pressed cork, or even screw caps. What is often overlooked, is that the problems with wine can have other causes than the natural cork, such as; oxidation, sulfur dioxide, a reducing odor, volatile acidity, 2,4,6-TCA, and microbiological spoilage. Of all these problems, the consumer can say: this wine has TCA. It is, therefore, possible that bottles without natural cork still taste like TCA. It is somewhat due to the wrong method of cleaning in the wine bottling plant itself. It has been found that the chlorine solutions used to sterilize corks were often the culprit, but, since 1996, the use of chlorine solutions has been banned under the "Code of Practice". Alternatively, the use of hydrogen peroxide is allowed.

Since 1995, the cork industry has been taking both preventive and curative measures to suppress the co-production of 2,4,6-TCA. However, the use of plastic stoppers and screw caps has shown that TCA or cellar flavor can have several causes. Cleaning agents based on chlorine products, crop protection agents used in the treatment of cork trees, and cardboard packaging bleached with chlorine compounds are just a few examples of sources of chlorine that can give rise to 2,4,6-TCA.