Thank You.

Egg farts.

You're welcome.

Ask and ye shall receive.

Moldy, wet cardboard or "Cork" smell. Flat palate. Some bottle odors will blow off a few minutes after the bottle is opened, but TCA usually gets worse (smells stronger) with time in the glass.

The above is the classic diagnosis. Sometimes, TCA at lower levels, is detected by a bottle just not having the fruit component you expect, or what we often consider an "off "bottle. This may not be easy to differentiate from other causes of taint. Dry red wines apparently hide comparable levels of TCA in the tannin structure more than dry whites.

The bottle and the wine in the glass smells like a wet, moldy basement. It's awful and horribly present to me when the bottle is off.

smells like mildew......

"...Some bottle odors will blow off a few minutes after the bottle is opened..."

Happen to me once, I drank some of it after the odor went away. The wine tasted flat after that.
Is there any health implications?

The most common "blow off" odors are the sulfurs. Sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphate. As for health risk, I guess it depends on who you ask. All wines have some. I try to stay away from the lower end wines that are dosed with it. Nasty headaches.

I had the same question, so I went out and bought some trichloroanisole (TCA) from Sigma-Aldrich Chemical and made test solutions. I can understand why so many people have trouble accurately describing the odor, because it is completely chemical and to a great extent, unatural. I do not think it smells like wet cardboard or wet dog.

To me it smells like mold or cheap white grapes from the grocery store. I say that, because after smelling concentrated test solutions, I bought some white table grapes and started eating them. They were LOADED with TCA odor. TCA can be a product of chlorine cleansers, water and grapes - all things probably used in the grocery store refrigerated fruit bins.

TCA has a poignant, sharp, chemical smell. Some molds have this odor. Ever walk into a washroom or shower room that wasn't well cleaned with mold on the ceiling? That mold smell has a TCA-like character. For me, the odor lingers for a long time. But It wasn't until I bought some and made test solutions that I would have been able to tell you that it was present or not. Now I know.

If a person never smelled an apple before, how could he describe it?

Ken

Obvious TCA tainted wine is something that anyone can detect, but as Dr. T mentions, it can be subtle, both because of the amount of contamination and the taster's threshold. While I have never had a TCA tainted bottle that I returned declined, I wonder whether I was always agreed with. It is also probably not a good thing to return a TCA contaminated bottle that has not been recently purchased.

Dick

Everything here is pretty accurate from my experience. The problem with some TCA manifestations really comes in restaurants. Getting them to take back a mildly affected bottle can be a chore. Without the obvious mildew or cardboard or (insert your descripter here), it can sometimes be hard to convince less experienced servers that the wine is shot.


One other thing to point out... I have had bottles that have an extreme nutty character to them. I think nuttiness can also be a bottle defect, but I am not sure it is necessarily TCA. perhaps someone else can answer that.

It's really interesting how individuals have different thresholds for detecting TCA. Mr. Winetex can smell the most minute TCA. For whatever reason he has the gift (?). Interestingly he can't taste it at the same concentration. I can usually taste it at levels that most people can't but can't really smell it unless it's really, really corked.

As a team very little if any corked wine gets by us these days. We had some fun at a wine tasting where the wine was corked but no one believed us until the teacher went "ick" instantly. It had slipped by all of the people who were tasting and pouring the bottles.

I'm with Mr. Winetex.
How can one NOT detect it? It jumps out at me from across the room. Even the slightest whiff will ruin it for me. I have experienced the "lessening" of the taint as it airs, but can't get past it. Especially if I know how the wine should be tasting. If it's not too offensive, I watch it cheerfully consumed by those who have more TCA tolerance.

That being said, I am a big BRETT fan, so from one stink to another, it's subjective.

QOH - I've also found that many of the women in my wine "circle" are very sensitive to TCA, probably more so than the men. Strictly anecdotal of course...

I find TCA fairly easily but it really shows up in Rieslings and Gewurztraminers for me.

I'm very sensitive to brett, but I must be immune to TCA. I don't recall ever experiencing it.

GATC, I don't have a high threshold for TCA either. I very rarely detect it. Even after we had 2 corked bottles in class a few weeks ago, I still didin't notice it. I've only experienced it once that I noticed. Just guess it is something I can't pick up on easily.

jb

JB, don't despair. Or maybe, count yourself lucky. When I started down the road of wine education, I couldn't distinguish TCA either. Now, that I can recognise it, I seem to have a very low tolerance for it.

About 5 years ago I took a wine course (once a week for ten weeks) at Draeger's Market in San Mateo (fairly upscale large wine department). Every week the instructer would bring a couple of bottles that had been sold at retail and then returned. I will tell you there is a very small chance that you won't be able to tell if something is corked. It is stinko! Wet cardboard with sulpher is a good general description. You might go down to your local wine merchant and ask if he has any and ask for a smell.