A Big Bouquet for Berringer Blass

Recently I heard on Auswine Forum that Berringer Blass had placed a bottle of wine that had been affected with TCA on the counter of its Cellar Door operation and was encouraging people to actually sniff the wine. What’s this I said to myself; here is a wine company that not is not only acknowledging TCA is a problem, but is trying to help consumers recognise it, that can’t be right! So I decided to check the facts.

I rang Jill Mader the CD manager and had a chat to her. Yes, the story is true and it was Jill’s very bright idea. They plan to have a TCA contaminated bottle on the counter as long as there is TCA wine available (which shouldn’t be difficult to achieve.) After a week (or as soon as the wine starts to show signs of oxidation,) it is thrown out.

I asked Jill why are they doing it and she said “In the past when we opened a bottle and detected TCA we would place it aside an open another one. Frequently the customers would ask what was wrong with the first one and we would tell them its not as fresh as it could be which was just hoodwinking everyone.

From time to time people used to ring complaining and angry about a bad bottle of wine that had spoilt a dinner party. It may have even been a bottle of our Black Label. When I questioned the caller it frequently turned out to be a TCA problem so I had to try and explain all about it.

Education and explanation at Cellar Door is a much better alternative and we see that as part of our job. (We also use the Le Nez du Vin fault kit to educate our staff.) as part of the process we are also explaining the role of Stelvin Closures to our visitors.

One of our Cellar Door staff objectives and goals for the year is to do more customer education on VA and TCA. The goals are known to the Group Cellar Door Manager and we see the process expanding to all our cellar door operations.”

Well done Jill Mader and Berringer Blass. For far to long too many wineries have buried their head in the sand on the TCA problem. In fact, some wineries knowingly serve wines at CD when they are aware the whole batch has a very high level of corks that are contaminated with TCA. In other words, they are happy to treat their customers like mugs and try and sell wines they know are “crap.”

People who buy these wine without trying them first and don’t realise the wine is not what it is meant to be, simply think that product is bad wine and won’t be stupid enough to buy it again, possibly for many years. These producers have effectively knowingly damaged their own reputation because of short-term profit objectives.

There are a number of cases where I know this has happened in both small and large wine operations and frankly these companies deserve the reputations they will eventually wind up obtaining.

Yes, TCA is the bane of a wine lovers life and is a massive problem within the industry, but pretending it isn’t there isn’t the answer. In the longer term, Berringer Blass will be handsomely rewarded for the honest and educative approach they are taking. Yes, it will cost them as they have an increase in dud bottles being returned, but that should be more than compensated for by increased sales from a happier and better-educated customer base.

Keep drinking,