WHAT ABOUT CORKS?

The estimates of “corked” wine fluctuate around 5% of all wines sealed with a natural cork.  The resulting wine is noticeably flawed with a musty, dank character and should be thrown out or returned to purveyor, but definitely not consumed. Several years ago we took a 10 year old 5 liter bottle of Reserve Pinot Noir purchased directly from a reputable winery to a special winemaker’s party. The wine was so badly corked nobody could or would drink it.

“Cork” taint comes from a compound, TCA, whose source is not clearly known. The compound may be inherent in the cork itself, or it may be the by-product of trying to sterilize cork in order to remove natural mold from the bark. Cork comes from the bark of the cork oak tree.  Harvesting and processing cork is an interesting story in itself. Considerable research has been done over the last 5-10 years with limited success in eliminating the TCA problem.

A worse issue with TCA, not accounted for in the above statistic, is that the compound may exist in a wine at a subliminal level such that the fruit character of the wine is killed resulting in a “dull” wine that has no redeeming graces. In this case, the consumer blames the producer.

Enter Vare Vineyards, as a brand new winery offering a variety of wine, Ribolla Gialla, that few people have heard of, let alone tried. We cannot afford the exposure to TCA in a subliminal situation. We want people to enjoy this “new” varietal and our wine and not be put off by a matter “beyond our control” with the resulting negative accruing to us or the varietal. 

Thus, we took control. Our wines are sealed with a synthetic cork made by Nomacork. In truth, we would have used a screw cap, but the glass companies have been slow to produce a variety of glass accepting screw caps especially in the 500 ML size. This situation is changing as the wine world progresses in addressing the “corked” problem.

Since we are only producing white wines, we are not concerned about the questions of long term ageing benefits with screw caps or synthetic corks. Numerous taste tests have shown that wines sealed in this way retain their fruit better in the 1-5 year range after bottling than with natural corks.

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