Can wine from bottles without corks

Nothing is more disappointing for the wine lover than a bottle of wine, which after opening a musty smell and taste for themselves. Traditionally responsible for this Fehlton is the substance 2,4,6-trichloroanisole , short TCA. The fabric is created when cork are treated with chlorine-containing fungicides. Some fungi are not thereby deterred fact, but it produce the musty TCA.

Our nose is very sensitive to this chemical. connoisseurs turn up their olfactory organ already in a TCA-containing half a nanogram per liter. This corresponds not know how to read at times, a thimble TCA, which was dissolved in Lake Constance – but a smaller lake like the Krumme Lanke Berlin might have already smell musty with a cubic centimeter.


Therefore, many wine lovers have the introduction of plastic and metal closures also welcomed for upscale wines. But then the greater the frustration when one looks up towards the opening of the famous stench. How can that be? Perhaps the wine was decanted from bottles corked?

The answer is: There is a wine cellar for TCA and other sources for the very similar-smelling substances 2,3,4,6-tetrachloroanisole shortly TeCA, and 2,4,6-tribromoanisole (TBA). These occur when microorganisms pounce on certain chemicals. Chemicals, which have been previously impregnated with, for example, wood pallets or cartons of wine. The fabrics are extremely volatile and can therefore quickly infect wine bottles’. ”

Chemists from the DLR Moselle outwitted 2006 in the journal , the German wine to where they were able to detect traces of TBA: in wine filters, wooden pallets, cardboard, plastic packaging, but also in plastic stoppers and seals for crown caps and screw caps.

Up to the hosts themselves but that has probably not yet gotten around. The grin will likely consider when “a screw-top bottle with the words The korkelt! Wants to go back.”