I have just installed Taj Mahal quartzite and it appears to be very durable. I know that it was sealed by the fabricator installation folks in my home. I have certainly spilled lemon juice, olive oil. So far so good, but I have not let the juices or oil sit on the surface over night. I don't think id worry too much about the side absorption problem. Good luck.

Ps it will be gorgeous

Nice work on getting a sample and putting it through its paces!

My best guess is that it's quartzite. The fact that it easily scratched glass is the clearest indication. My hunch is that the top is sealed and when you scratched it with a nail you scratched the sealer or scratched the polished surface. It sounds like it didn't etch, which is another point in the quartzite column.

The unsealed part of the stone absorbed the red wine color, so it's porous. That makes sense, but it's more important that the sealed top resisted staining. So I think you're safe there.

On the surface that you scratched with a nail, my advice would be to examine the scratch and try to determine how deep it goes. Can you tell if it really goes into the rock? Can you polish it out? Try scotch brite.

My question to the fabricators would be to learn what they treated the top with. Maybe there are other options that are less likely to scratch?

I have Madre Perla/Mother of Pearl and it's been bulletproof for 3 years. I had never even heard of counterfeit quartzite -- I just trusted my fabricator who told me that this was a very, very hard stone and that it would never stain. He was right. I've left red wine sitting out on the counter at night, and then just wiped it off in the morning.

Thanks so much, I'm going to talk to the fabricator about it this afternoon. I do think it's a sealer issue. I've read conflicting information about this and I'm not sure if quartzite should be sealed at all. Is just polishing it enough? @pipdog, do you know whether yours was sealed?

I have madre perla brushed. Mine is bulletproof as well. Mine is sealed.

I think most quartzites do need sealing. It depends on porosity which varies between stones, and some of the types of quartzite have a fairly high porosity. Moreover the light color makes it so that stains would be more visible.

Quartzite is a metamorphic rock that started out as sand. The sand grains lost their structure due to heat and pressure and new crystals formed. That process may have left microscopic pores in the rock or the pores may have all filled in.

Therefore, the porosity of quartzite varies a lot. Some like the Azul do Mar we have is very low porosity and doesn't need sealing. Some needs sealing. If it needs sealing, then get it sealed and it will be fine. Sealing isn't a big deal.

I've read that polishing can sometimes fill in the pores so the polished surface of a stone isn't porous but the unpolished surface is. I don't know if that's true but it could explain what you saw with your stone.

The sample I had did this-the polished side, well, I could NOT get it to stain if I wanted it too. Or etch. But the side that was not sealed, soaked up blackberry juice that ran over and was purple. But after a day it just evaporated away...so I def think it needs sealing...