In the exquisitely decorated western restaurant, a well-dressed couple put down their knives and forks, looking at the well-dressed, clean white-gloved waiter slowly opening the cork on the wine bottle with a corkscrew, for the meal The two poured a delicious wine with attractive colors…
Does this scene look familiar? Once the elegant part of opening the bottle is missing, it seems that the mood of the whole scene will disappear. It is precisely because of this that people always subconsciously feel that wines with cork closures are often of better quality. Is this the case? What are the advantages and disadvantages of cork stoppers?
The cork stopper is made of a thick bark called cork oak. The whole cork stopper is directly cut and punched on the cork board to obtain a complete whole cork stopper, as well as broken wood and broken pieces. The cork stopper is not made by cutting and punching the whole cork board, it may be made by collecting the remaining cork chips after the previous cutting and then sorting, gluing and pressing…
One of the great advantages of cork is that it allows a small amount of oxygen to slowly enter the wine bottle, so that the wine can obtain a complex and balanced aroma and taste, so it is very suitable for wines with aging potential. At present, most wines with strong aging potential will choose Use a cork to seal the bottle. On the whole, natural cork is the earliest stopper used as a wine stopper, and it is currently the most widely used wine stopper.
However, corks are not perfect and without shortcomings, such as TCA contamination of corks, which is a big problem. In some cases, cork will produce a chemical reaction to produce a substance called “trichloroanisole (TCA)”. If the TCA substance comes into contact with the wine, the odor produced is very unpleasant, a bit similar to damp. The smell of rags or cardboard, and can’t get rid of it. An American wine taster once commented on the seriousness of TCA contamination: “Once you smell a wine contaminated with TCA, you will never forget it for the rest of your life.”
The TCA pollution of cork is an unavoidable defect of cork-sealed wine (although the proportion is small, it still exists in a small amount); as to why the cork has this substance, there are also different opinions. It is believed that the wine cork will carry some substances during the disinfection process, and then encounter bacteria and fungi and other substances to combine to produce trichloroanisole (TCA).
Overall, corks are good and bad for wine packaging. We cannot try to judge the quality of a wine by whether it is packaged with cork. You won’t know until the aroma of the wine has soaked your taste buds.