When George Taber was working on “Judgment of Paris,” his book on the 1976 Paris tasting, he traveled to many wine producing areas around the world to determine the global impact of the event. But winemakers weren’t talking about that as much as they were about the problems they were having with cork taint. “They were talking about the subject of closures,” he said.

This led Taber to looking into closures, and the result is his new book, “To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science and the Battle for the Wine Bottle.”

Taber told the Register he worked two years full-time to research the book, and it took him to Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile and to France, Portugal, Switzerland and Germany in Europe.

The result is a fact-filled book that often reads like a novel. It looks at every type of closure used in the wine industry today and reveals many previously unknown, but perhaps suspected, facts about the controversy surrounding closures. It’s interspersed with occasional “Message in a Bottle” anecdotes which relate good and bad experiences with wine closures, including one about a cork in a bottle of 1961 Chateau Margaux that broke in half when being opened. Nothing could get the bottom half out, so a glass cutter was used to cut the neck of the bottle, the wine was poured through cheesecloth and the guests enjoyed it.

The biggest cause of cork taint is 2-4-6 trichloroanisole, better known as TCA, which imparts an odor sometimes described as like a moldy newspaper, a wet dog or a damp basement. It’s estimated that as many as 5 percent of bottles have TCA, and some experts say the number is even higher than that. Taber traces the discovery of TCA by Hans Tanner, a Swiss scientist who became involved when winemakers came to his employer, the Wädenswil Institute, seeking a solution to the offensive smell and taste they often found in their wines.

Tanner isolated the elements that caused the odors and tastes and identified them as trichloroanisole because of three chlorine atoms he discovered, and the 2-4-6 came into the name because the atoms are found at positions two, four and six on the compound’s benzine ring, according to the book.

“The high point of my research was when I discovered that he (Tanner) was still alive and I talked with him,” Taber recalled.  

Tanner was criticized by a cork company executive who said that making his work public gave cork a bad image, and Tanner is quoted in the book as saying, “They (the Portuguese cork industry) felt that if they ignored the problem, it would go away. They were also afraid that if they examined their corks, too many of them would be rejected.”

Taber traces the evolution of each of the closures — corks from as far back as 500 B.C. and screw caps from the discovery of the concept by John Mason who invented the jar that bears his name. The book talks about plastic closures and the various methods used to produce them, and it covers glass stoppers and crown caps, listing the plusses and minuses of all of them.

The problem of cork taint started to become more pronounced in the 1980s when consumers worldwide began to notice more and more that wines were tasting and smelling bad. Taber outlines the reasons why things seemed so much worse then and traces much of the problem to political difficulties in Portugal.

The book recounts an incident in Australia in which Antonio Amarim, head of one of the leading cork producing companies bearing his family name, spent four hours being berated by Aussie producers. He asked for a glass of water, took a taste of it and realized it contained TCA. He passed it around for the assembled winemakers to smell, and all agreed it was TCA. Amarin told them that he understood the cork industry had a problem, but added, “But I think it’s time for your water to stop contaminating my cork.”

The “Funeral for the Cork” chapter brings a smile as Taber describes how Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard conducted a mock funeral for a figure made of corks, identified as Thierry Bouchon, which, as Taber describes, is a play on the French word for corkscrew. He quotes from the “eulogy” delivered by Jancis Robinson, MW.

Taber writes at length about ETS, the testing lab in St. Helena founded by Marjorie Groat, who later married Gordon Burns, and explains the prominent role the company has played in the cork taint arena.

One of the more fascinating chapters involved Hanzell Vineyards in Sonoma County and the discovery that the entire cellar was infected with TCA. How Hanzell president Jean Arnold dealt with the problem is explained in detail – she met it head-on by telling retailers and distributors about it and offered to take back any of the 2000 chardonnay they felt might not be “right.” Only 12 cases were returned.

Taber makes it clear that the problem is far from being solved, and research into stoppers continues, described in the final chapter.

Taber never reveals his own preference but instead reports the facts, just like the reporter he formerly was, and allows the reader to form his or her own opinions. While the book contains some scientific terminology and at times appears to be highly technical, even a non-scientist can understand it, and it’s an easy and fascinating read.

 “To Cork or Not to Cork,” published by Scribner, $26, with a foreword by Karen MacNeill. It’s available at Copia, at major bookstores and online, and soon will be available at the Napa Main Library.