cork taint in spirits

[daveflintstone]

Anyone ever have cork taint in your spirits?

I've just had one bottle of vodka returned for being corked. It is indeed corky, the classic wet cardboard taste. I was using natural cork bartops for this product.

It's the only one I've had in thousands of bottles, so I guess that's not too bad. Of course, there's no way to know how many were corked and not returned, but I'm going to assume none or a very small amount. Any corked product is a bummer because the consumer will assume the product just tastes bad.

Since I'm switching to all synthetic bartops I suppose I've eliminated this problem.

[Jonathan Forester]

I've run across it several times back when I worked retail wine and spirits as a kid. Haven't run across it in years, but we decided to use high quality synthetic just in case, and for other reasons besides like cork breakage and leaking.

[Copperstill]

I have noticed it in very high end brandies. I agree with Jonathan that its wiser to use synthetic or screw cap.