With the number of damaged bottles on the market ranging from 5% to 10% in the last decade, corked wines have long been a serious issue for the wine industry. APCOR, the Portuguese Cork Association, puts it a much lower 1%. A corked wine smell—often likened to wet blanket or soggy newspaper—is caused by Trichloroanisole (TCA), a natural compound that, at higher levels, can impart musty flavors and aromas to wines. The high incident of this fault alone has long driven the wine and closure industry to seek out other solutions: everything from glass tops to screw caps.
Cork is still dominant however, with 70% of wines bottled with it, according to the Santa Maria de Lamas-based APCOR. But the world's largest cork producer, Porto-based Amorim, has finally debuted what it calls the best solution to the problem: a TCA-free guarantee. Supposedly the methodology behind the company's new technology was so good that Amorim was offered two insurance policies, according to Carlos DeJesus, the company's marketing director. The method tests the corks and either removes them completely from the bottling line or returns them for treatment if they show trace amounts of TCA.
In that TCA cannot currently be completely prevented in natural cork—i.e. those closures that are made entirely from cork—the best approach to avoiding it is removing any possibly tainted product from the lineup. This is what Amorim is now saying can be done in seconds, instead of the minute or two extra that the process used to take. The detection levels have also been fine-tuned to pick up levels as low as 0.5 nanograms of TCA, which is a much smaller measurement than the bulk of medical researchers are working with, notes DeJesus.
The new cork production method, which entails removing or treating faulty corks, is called NDtech. It is short for non detectable. DeJesus notes that corks produced with it have already been shipped to more than 1,300 wineries around the world. Amorim is also committed to having cork taint entirely removed from wine bottles by 2020, which is right around the corner.
The additional cost, according to DeJesus, should only be 0.12 to 0.15 euros per additional cork. That is no doubt workable for many producers' high-end wines. However, many other producers may not be able to afford the extra cost notes Jon Moramarco, a Napa-based partner in the consulting firm of Gomberg & Fredrikson.
Given the hit-and-miss nature of corks, smart producers and closure companies have long left themselves open to multiple options. Many producers who make young wines not meant to age have moved to screw caps and are not likely to recycle back, according to Moramarco.