"Ric" > wrote:

> Found this article on one of my newsfeeds (taken from
> "wineloverspage.com") - thought many of you might also find it
> interesting. I'm rather intrigued at the remark attributed to
> the Portugese cork makers - that the term 'corked' is misleading
> --- maybe we should be saying 'tainted' instead?
>
> [...]

No we shouldn't.

That's very typical cork producers marketing speak fighting
against losing market shares to alternative closures.

I happen to live in a country (Austria) where alternative closures
haveen an immense uproar, making it the no four country in the
world after NZ, AU, and CH.

We do taste professionally between 2,000 and 3,000 wines a year.
At the slightest suspect of taint we do immediately open a second
bottle and taste it alongside the first. With bark corks, we have
between 10 and 30 percent cork taints, i.e. that the backup-bottle
confirms the problem of the first by showing better (or, rarely,
by being worse).

Although the share of screw-capped and glass-stoppered wine is
much lower than 10 percent, I have yet to come across a wine where
there is a difference between the suspect and the back-up bottle.
In fact we had only one glass-stoppered wine with a problem
similar to TCA, and none under screw-cap, althouh we had bad wines
under both closures.

M.