If you torture data enough, the old saying goes, it will confess to just about anything. Which is why it’s easy to pick holes in Robert Joseph’s claim that 15 percent of Sauvignon Blancs at this year’s Swiss Air Wine Awards were corked.
Was every single dodgy bottle counted and then correctly calculated to 15 percent of the total – or was it a bit of rough guestimate? Exactly how many less-than-perfect bottles were
really bad because of cork taint? How were they tested to confirm that they were ruined by that wretched purveyor of cork taint, TCA (
trichloroanisole)?
Fallible an instrument that the nose is, particularly when it’s attached to the face of a card-carrying anti-cork man, how reliable is that figure really?
I’m not saying that Joseph is necessarily wrong, I’m just suggesting that if the industry is going to attach its decision making to statistics, it needs to be sure these are a great deal more accurate than a few
ad hoc observations by one or two powerful wine writers.
The reason I’m questioning the Big Man himself is because his figures are being passed along by wine writers as if they are the gospel truth, delivered piously from a non-partisan pulpit to the devout masses.
No way are these figures objective or based in scientific methods!
Meanwhile the WWF is being accused of having a nefarious relationship with the cork industry and being used as a platform for the pro-cork agenda – simply because they decided to add a bit more depth to the debate (the WWF’s Cork Screwed? report appears a lot more scientific and credible than Joseph’s thumb-suck).
The WWF raises a few good points about the pros of the industry (summarised nicely by Jeanine Wardman in
The Closure Chronicles: The statesman, the lynx and the venison pie) and the potential sensitivity of the environment and industry associated with the cork forests of
Europe.
Let’s give credit where it’s due. There are pros and cons to all types of bottle closures – cork and plastic bottle plugs, screw caps and any other new fangled device the industry might invent in the future – and plastic is not without its problems.
Any kind of plastic closure is using an unsustainable, non-replenishing resource.
End of Oil author Paul Roberts estimates that we’ve used up about 875 billion barrels of oil during the industrial revolution. He says the US Geological Survey estimates there are still a guaranteed 1.7 trillion barrels of oil left in the ground and another 900 billion barrels of undiscovered oil. Whether or not these figures are accurate, the oil that’s left is being gobbled up by the carbon-hungry industrial world and it is becoming increasingly difficult (read 'more expensive') to extract. Optimists say we’ve got 60 to 100 years before oil production peaks and prices become prohibitive. Pessimists say we’ve got 20 years before the biggest crisis to face the industrial world finally arrives.
Thinking in the long term, why rely on a resource that is only going to get more expensive. Shouldn’t we be working on technologies to ensure that a sustainable bottle-closure industry produces cleaner cork? Why not just do a better job of cleaning up cork and shunning producers with shoddy standards?
Life is too short to drink bad wine – and in my eight year affair with matters of the vine, I’ve had to endure vastly greater volumes of dreadful wine than I have corked wine. Yes, you’re right, my untrained nose is considerably less talented than the anointed hooter of Mr Joseph and his peers – nevertheless if the figures are as bad as everyone claims, why am I not opening one tainted bottle in every ten?
No, let’s not start leaning on anecdote again. I’m just saying this: the industry needs more credible figures to quantify the problem. And if I was a Cape winemaker, I’d have a great deal more to worry about than a few bottles of cork tainted wine.