Abstract
A real corker Is your wine corky? Does it smell like a wet dog and have a flat, dull flavor? If so, you’ve become a victim of cork taint. A collaboration between a maker of natural cork bottle stoppers and an expert in gas chromatography hopes to banish the problem for good. The contaminant that turns good wine into sour grapes is 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), a compound produced by mold. Although cork taint is a centuries-old problem, scientists have identified the culprit only in the past 40 years. TCA gets into cork through an age-old battle of the kingdoms: Plantae versus Fungi. Cork is the bark of the cork oak tree, also known as Quercus suber. Once every 10 years or so, the trees are stripped of their bark. Over a 200-year lifetime, each bark-regenerating tree can provide thousands of wine stoppers. Q. suber defends itself against fungal attack by producing
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