Bad corks are more frequent from Spanish producers?

That wines have when are imported/exported, not the travel that we have beside our wines in our backpacks, cars and flights ;-)

Cheers,

Joes

Don’t know what to say maybe we’re lucky :-), maybe those bad corks are protecting us from those big inversors :^). Anyway is a pity that or wines don’t get there in the good shape, maybe if we make a bit of noise in the spanish forum some people hear about the problem.

a.

In theory the best-respected importers (Ordóñez, Solomon, Cannan, Kysela, etc) are using reefers and other refrigerated containers for most import operations. Of course no one knows for sure, but there are threads on the effects of travel shock on whites and reds, including answers from ";Bob himself";. That means travel shock, no heat damage.

(V)

Thanks for the links, Gastro. You know very well the WS and eBob forums :-)

Regarding some statistics I have found a very interesting contribution of David Schildknecht on the J. Robinson site. Says David:

";I taste around 750 German wines and 500 Austrian wines each year on my trips. In my work at Vintner Select I regularly present to clients hundreds of wines from France, Italy, California and Australia. In addition, on the occasion of public tastings which form a major part of my profession, I typically take personal responsibility for checking all of the bottles. In Germany it has been said of me that I can hear a corked bottle, so yes, I suppose I am pretty sensitive to TCA. I automatically have the taped record of all corked bottles I am served ’in the field’ and I keep a very close tab on the corked bottles I encounter Stateside in my work at Vintner Select.

Here are the levels of cork I experience:

- Germany - 14-15 per cent
- Austria, France - 11-12 per cent
- California, Australia, Italy - 10-11 per cent ";

http://www.jancisrobinson.com/jr850.htm

Nothing is said about Spanish wines but that levels seem impressive. There is really a big problem here.

It sounds to me more like a Pesquera issue, we all know about the problems with the corks of A. Fernández, but from here to generalize tot all the spanish wines....quite an exageration!
I still drinking most of Spanish wine (for how long...) and my perception is that they have the same problems as abroad. Not far on my memory was one Dr. Loosen’s eiswein completely corked (of course I know it is not seepage, but to me it is even worst: just undrinkable). I believe that about 2 years ago one of the top italian producers had a big problem with cork, all that vintage went to its cork supplier...
Why the wines of New Zealand are generally known (whites) to don’t use cork...
To me the cork issue is a global concern...we are using more cork than the nature can produce (in optimal conditions), so in place to wait 30 years, we are taking after 8....perhaps we are looking our selves for problems....

BTW, on my cellar I have several ";older"; items and till now most of them are right and certainly no one had ";seepage"; problems (of course I don’t have A.Fernández wines...).

Greetings,

Ricard

I would say that within 10 years 90% of all wine will be with plastic corks or screwcapped. The traditional cork will become a kind of status symbol.

I must say that persoanlly I prefer the tarditional cork, but can certainly see the advantages of plastic for anything but wine that needs long aging. Maybe if the cork industry had done something about this years ago instead of sitting on their laurels, they wouldn’t be facing this problem now.