Well, it could be. I think most of you know that cork comes from trees. They are the bark of cork oak trees, which means that this closure is a renewable resource. Fortunately you do not have to cut down the tree to collect the cork; however they can only harvest each tree 1 out of every 10 years. In fact it takes 50 years before the cork company can harvest the tree for wine cork!

At any rate, it is part of my job to look at and smell the cork we buy. For some of our programs I actually smell every cork that goes into the bottle! I am still a little shocked by this. We soak the cork in diluted alcohol (13%) for 24 hours then we smell them for off odors. The clean ones go in the bottle; the bad are destined for the trash. Off odors you may find in corks are the following: the compound that provides the “corked” aroma in your bottle is known as TCA, 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, and it smells of various things, but is mostly described as wet newspaper. Other compounds that may be found in cork are 2-methylisoborneol (think dirt) and geosmin (described as earthy).

Before you get to the point of smelling the cork there is a visual inspection. Who knew there was such attention to the look of cork, right? So, first you send your cork to “school”, yes you give it an A – D letter grade. This is done by looking at a representative sample of cork for your bottling. My grading scale goes a little something like this:

A – No lenticels on the ends of the cork (lenticels are the lines or channels running through the cork) and an almost perfect body, meaning very small channels, if any.

B – One end of the cork with lenticels, the other clean. The body has channels, but fairly small. No cracks, or bark grain.

C – Both ends of the cork have lenticels. The body has bigger channels, it may have bark grain, cracks or small holes as long as they do not traverse more than ¾ of the cork length.

D – These are “defective” corks. They do have bark grain, cracks or small holes that traverse more than ¾ of the cork length.

After you sort your sample you can make a designation of quality of the cork lot. If the grading suits your standards then you can weed out off odors by soaking that sample of representative cork. After all that work you’ve got your cork lot you can use for that bottling.

Julie Murrell
Assistant Winemaker