A tasting experience to avoid
The DOCG rule number 8.2 specifies that only natural closures from a single piece cork (i.e. not micro-agglomerated) are permitted for Brunello. Cork selection is critical though of course, as a natural product, cork is distinguished by intrinsic variability. A well-known Tuscan enological laboratory reports that between 2008 and 2012 the controls on packaging increased by 63% which is an indicator of the significance of this issue.
In our case, a high end wine that has taken five years to make and that can be aged for a further 15-20 years cannot be let down by the dreaded cork taint. We all know that smell of dank basement, musty cardboard (baby carrots anyone?) that reveals the presence of Trichloroanisole, or TCA for short. It is one of the easiest flaws to detect in wine: our threshold for detection is extremely low compared to other compounds.
Cork producers are constantly evolving their control processes and employ computer-aided TCA-detection processes to inspect cork on a molecular level (more here). For our next bottling of 2017 Brunello and 2016 Le Due Porte we are using Naturity which offers many guarantees. Nevertheless we also do our own in-house testing. We follow a protocol published in 2012 after a collaboration between umpteen experts (in Italian here ).
A specific percentage of uncontaminated cork samples from a delivery are chosen at random and soaked in solution of distilled water and 10% alcohol for 24/48 hours. At least three tasters have to taste the liquid and grade eventual defects with a 30 second break in between each sample. The accepted industry percentage is a staggering 2% but anything more than that constitutes grounds to refuse delivery.
This year I participated for the first time. I have to say that this particular tasting – la degustazione dei tappi - was one of the most unpleasant drinking experiences I have ever had in our cellar or anywhere else for that matter. As well as nausea-inducing it was also frustrating; in the 60 samples tasted, we did not have a single TCA result so I was unable to add alcohol-infused corky water to my organoleptic library….