Washington Winery Cayuse's Insurer Sues Cork Producer for $3.5 Million

[ibglowin]

Holy Sh1t! A name many of us know all to well.

https://www.winespectator.com/artic...O1j9QvBw8_dEZBU09sxrjRteOGIdUzq7FNIwILdz8f-WU

 

[stickman]

Yea, that sounds like a messy battle, I'm sure both sides are arranging their technological experts. The cork coating machine manufacturer is yet another party at potential risk for being pulled into the mess.

 

[Boatboy24]

Yikes!

 

[ibglowin]

If anyone placed an order for corks from them back in the Spring of 2017 you should be checking your wines ASAP.

 

[cmason1957]

This makes me think that a winery operator who gave our wine club a tour may be (at least) partially correct. When we walked into the winemaking area, I got a very faint whiff of bleach. I asked him about it, he said that he and several of his winemaking contemporaries all had talked long and hard about the bleach issue and cork taint, they all use some bleach in initial cleaning, and it is very well rinsed away and had done the same for many years (some approaching 30-40 years). They felt that the real culprit in the rise in cork taint was poor practices at the cork manufacturers and that the cork producers had jumped on bleach, since maybe it might have something to do with it, but not really.

All that having been said, I still don't allow bleach into my house, even though the washroom is on a different level and other end of the house from my winemaking area.

 

[Johnd]

If Lafitte shipped tainted corks in 2017, the odds of Cayuse getting all of them is slim, in which case, where are all of the other winery suits against Lafitte?

 

[ibglowin]

Could be others but this is the one that makes the headlines since it was easily the most coveted, collected and expensive wine from WA State. Lafitte is sure not going to bring it up in their marketing and sales brochure.

 

[ibglowin]

Also this was more than likely a one customer (Cayuse) only run of corks since it was such a huge order (45,000 corks) and was using a new machine to apply the paraffin coating. So defective machine or defective lot of paraffin wax perhaps.

 

[Boatboy24]

I've got to go back and look at my last order. I think it was 2018.

 

[ffemt128]

I recently had to switch to Synthetic Corks. My tenco corker was compressing the length of the corks. I've used Lafitte corks for a long time. Never noticed an issue.