The term is short for cork-tainted, the chief culprit being a chemical chlorine compound called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), although there are others.
TCA imparts an unpleasant, musty smell and taste.
It can infect cork through a number of pathways.
Cleaning chemicals and disinfectants used in a winery or cork forest are possible causes.
But it’s not always the cork that carries the TCA.
It can be in the staves of a barrel or even the timber in the winery.
A single, tainted barrel can ruin an entire batch if its contents are carelessly blended.
But rumour has it that cling wrap eg. Saran/Glad can come to the rescue.
The idea is that you put cling wrap in the wine by either pouring the wine into a jug and letting it soak with it for a while or push some cling wrap into the bottle.
Nope….doesn’t work!
The Australian Wine Research Institute’s senior oenologist, Adrian Coulter, confirms that cling wrap doesn’t remove cork taint and published scientific work backs this up.
Polythene or polyethylene (PE), the world’s most manufactured plastic, does, in fact, remove cork taint from wine, but it has to be 100 per cent pure, food-grade PE.
Cling wrap contains various polymers other than PE.
Pure food-grade PE can only be obtained from manufacturers and is not generally available to the average Joe.
The best insurance against wine taint is simply buy screw-capped bottles.
