This week we are learning what cork taint is and what it actually means to have a \u201ccorked wine\u201d \u2013 and no, it is not those small bits of cork that you occasionally find floating in your glass.<\/p>\n
Corked wines display aromas of wet cardboard, damp, and mould, and generally a complete lack of fruit. The aromas are caused by a chemical present in the cork itself, rather than it being a fault with the wine \u2013 a chemical known as TCA or Tri-Chloro-Anisole.<\/p>\n
So, what causes TCA?<\/p>\n
Corks are made from thick sections of bark grown on cork oaks, mostly in Portuguese<\/a> forests, but you also find them in Spain<\/a>, Sardinia, and Sicily<\/a>. TCA is not naturally found in oak trees, but when certain moulds or fungi come into contact with chlorophenols \u2013 which are commonly found in pesticides \u2013 the compound can be formed.<\/p>\n The overuse of pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides in the late 20th<\/sup> century (when less was known about their impact on the environment) is thought to be largely to blame for the presence of TCA in cork. If a tainted cork ends up stopping your wine \u2013 all those mouldy aromas are imparted into the liquid and the wine is devastatingly ruined.<\/p>\n Whilst humans generally are very good at detecting cork taint, the signs can be less obvious to some \u2013 so importantly, if you do drink a corked wine, you can feel safe in the knowledge that it\u2019s not going to cause you any harm. It just won\u2019t taste very good.<\/p>\n Huge efforts and considerable investments have been made to tackle the cork taint problem \u2013 and of course many wine producers simply prefer to use closures such as screw caps or synthetic corks to side-step the problem entirely. But there is something rather satisfying about pulling a cork isn\u2019t there\u2026<\/p>\n Wine Education Wednesdays: Cork Taint This week we are learning what cork taint is and what it actually means to have a \u201ccorked wine\u201d \u2013 and no, it is not those small bits of cork that you occasionally find floating in your glass. Corked wines display aromas of wet cardboard, damp, and mould, and generally…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2149,"featured_media":43835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2254,1398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wine-education","category-thought-piece","category-2254","category-1398","description-off"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 20:24:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waudwines.com\/_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}See you again next Wine Education Wednesday!<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"