I believe Nathan Carlson was running some trials and he showed me some preliminary results in the past. I can put you in touch with him. He may have even posted his results in the thread on the OWC. See here: http://tinyurl.com/43ymet

I haven’t had any experience with them, either as a consumer or producer. Many of my peers have thier doubts. These are obviously ‘glued’ together somehow and since the cork are ‘composite’ I tend to think that they have traded one ill for another. You might be able to remove TCA ( and I emphasize MIGHT ) but how well will the cork stand up to time and will the adhesive impart any negative characteristics? I don’t know but similiar efforts, glueing in particular, have been tried before and I have known producers that have had serious problems with them. I would certainly be interested in hearing some testimonials from producers that have used them.

I had proposed that participants track the wines (and presumably prices). This would have allowed us to see if certain cork producers had greater incidences of taint. The group was reluctant to do this so I am afraid we did not collect this information.

What do you think of the DIAM closure?

Was there any attempt to sort out the price points of these wines? Corks come in a great variety of grades and prices. I would assume that few $10 bottles are closed with $.75 corks and that few $50 bottles closed with $.25 corks. I would postulate that incidence of cork taint is inverse to bottle price. Of course this is only up to a point; I am sure that DRC isn’t paying $30 a cork. Interesting work I will keep my eye of this post and future posts. Of course as an advocate for screwcaps I do assume a ‘told you so’ position. However the renewable and biodegradabel nature of cork as well as its ease of application make it a potentially attractive closure.