Musty Wine

[benarnold]

Well, I'll still keep the bleach out of my winemaking I think! I generally only use washing up liquid to clean and metabisulphite to sanitise.

But I'm wondering if this really is cork taint. It would be very unusual to have that many instances in a single batch of wine.

Are you talking about my raspberry NW? I have only had one bottle with the problem so far (out of three opened, six in total produced)

[NorthernWiner]

Ahh, sorry... my mistake. I misread your post. I thought it said you had run into this problem in two other bottles as well.

[goldseal]

Reviving an old(er) thread.

If you found a bottle of your wine with a cork taint problem, would you clean & sanitise the bottle and put it back 'into stock' for re-use, or would you bin it as fast as you could?

[NorthernWiner]

It's absolutely ok to reuse the bottles. TCA is caused by an airborne fungus coming into contact with chlorine. If there's no chlorine in the bottle, then there's nothing to worry about.

The only reason that the fungus takes hold in cork is because commercial cork is sometimes cleaned with a chlorine solution.

[Cellar_Rat]

i have reused bottles with all sorts of nasties in the past. Good wash. Good hard sulphiting to 24 hours. Store with a splash of alcohol in them. When was the last time you saw gin go off?

[mcblades]

When was the last time you saw gin go off?

It never gets the chance to in our house as it evaporates at a prodigious rate, especially if there are sloes or cherries in it!!

I had a corked bottle just last week and was wondering if it was because I had stopped sulphiting my corks before use. I have a floor corker and have had to strip and clean it twice in the last year because it was going rusty and making a mess of corks.

I figured it was my overuse of sulphite that caused the corrosion so have stopped and have noticed the corker is much cleaner. I am hoping this is not at the expense of a load of gone off wine in a year or so!

[Rich]

I too have stripped and rebuilt my floor corker a few times due to corrosion in it. I now dry it after use, either by leaving it near a radiator, or using a heat gun. Then I give it a good squirt of food grade oil spray (Rocol, I got mine from ebay) It does mean that it needs a good clean/degrease before the next use but at least it's not rusty! (although the oil spray is food grade, doesn't mean it's tasty! So remove it as best as possible before use)