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It is one of the most exciting moments of a wine lover: Opening a wine bottle. It is not simply necessity for the purpose of emptying it, but it is a small birth every time. What will come out? How will it taste? How will it present itself together with the food? Is it still drinkable at all or is it already layered? Or is it still as inaccessible as it was two years ago? Many questions, the answer to which will soon be in the glass.
And it is precisely at this moment that the unbelievable happens more and more often: cork! Trichloroanisole(TCA), the chemical substance that triggers cork taint, has made an answer forever impossible. Our curiosity will not be satisfied.

This is what happens many thousands of times a day. According to estimates - and my own experience confirms these figures - every 10th bottle of wine is affected by cork taint. Often noticed, but often without the victim noticing the damage. Then what happens is what should really alarm producers and all those responsible: The wine remains in bad memory and is never bought again.

Yet there are plenty of alternative closures: screw caps, crown corks and other tried and tested methods to seal a beverage bottle airtight and securely. But already with the attribute airtight we enter the realm of myths in the wine world. "The wine must breathe through the cork in order to mature well". As long as wine drinkers still believe in this modern fairy tale, they will also have to put up with cork taint.

"A good bottle of wine also needs the right popping effect". Expensive nostalgia, because corks not only cost a lot of money, but also destroy the contents of 10% of all wine bottles.

For me, it is incomprehensible why the VDP, which is otherwise so active in promoting wine quality, does not get involved here - on the contrary: when registering for the VDP's Gutswein wine festival, the producers were asked to agree by ticking the box that a plea by the producer in favour of natural cork would be printed in the catalogue under each wine list.

I hope that a rethinking on a broad basis will start soon. In order for something to change, both producers and consumers have to rethink. One will not and cannot do it without the other. In any case, everyone involved would benefit from a rethink.

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