Cork taint

[not verified in body] While the human threshold for detecting TCA is measured in the single-digit parts per trillion, this can vary by several orders of magnitude depending on an individual's sensitivity,[not verified in body] where the detection limit is also complicated by the olfactory system's particularly quick habituation to TCA, making the smell less obvious on each subsequent sniff.

[citation needed] The use of chlorine or other halogen-based sanitizing agents is being phased out of the wine industry in favor of peroxide or peracetic acid preparations.

[citation needed] Chlorine dioxide is a relatively new agent being used in the wine industry due to its obvious advantages, having shown no evidence of the possibility of TCA formation.

[citation needed] The production of TCA in cork or its transfer by other means into wine is complex, but most results when naturally occurring airborne fungi are presented with chlorophenol compounds, which they then convert into chlorinated anisole derivatives.

The results, compared with data from eight years ago, show a sharp reduction in TCA levels, of around 81 percent.

[8][better source needed] This occurs when wine barrels, drain pipes, wooden beams in the cellars, or rubber hoses are tainted by TCA.

[citation needed] The French company Embag markets a product called "Dream Taste", which uses a copolymer shaped like a cluster of grapes that is designed to remove the TCA taint from wine.

[citation needed] As advocated by Andrew Waterhouse, professor of wine chemistry at University of California, Davis, this can be done at home by pouring the wine into a bowl with a sheet of polyethylene plastic wrap; for ease of pouring, a pitcher, measuring cup, or decanter can be used instead, and the 2,4,6-trichloroanisole will stick to the plastic in a process effective within a few minutes.