No more cork taints for sparklers!

Death to the cork I say.

Mike (another bottle ruined last night, a Coteaux du Languedoc by Domaine Leyris Maizieres, must have had TCA in milligram quantities, never had a bottle so strongly tainted).

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

Let's hope others follow in their footsteps! As much as I enjoy the sound of the cork popping out of the bottle, I don't like being disappointed when the wine is tainted by the cork.

Karen

revolutionary step

Michael - I can't understand why consumers have accepted cork-tainted wines for so long with such reatraint. If 5% plus of milk or eggs or meat was tainted there'd be a public outcry. Here is review I wrote in June of crown sealed Seppelt bubbly

Martin

Seppelt Show Sparkling Shiraz 1994 $65.

To be released July 1 under a choice of crown seal (like a beer bottle top.) or cork. This one had the crown seal. Great Western, Victoria. Aged eight and a half years on lees. Medium red, purplish foam. Fragrant lifted nose of blackberries and spice. Creamy mouthfeel, more berries, beautifully balanced, long delicious aftertaste. I've tasted these wines back to the '46 vintage - all brilliant. Cellar to 2024.

Amen. The tide is turning strongly against the old cork. I just read a report in today's Reading Eagle (local paper) that Hogue of Washington is starting to switch to screw caps for several lines of their wine. I have yet to taste a wine stopped with synth cork that was tainted in any way.

Dan-O

FWIW, when I open a bottle of either Champagne or champagne ;^) you will _never_ hear the cork *pop*. Too frequently that pop is accompanied by a rush of bubbly wine that ends up going to waste on the floor, table etc., so I carefully release the excess pressure _slowly_ when withdrawing the cork. For similar reason, I pour sparkling wines down the side of a tilted glass. Those bubbles are very expensive, and I want the full experience of them in my _mouth_ - not propelling the wine to waste over the brim of the glass!

Tom S

Nope! Categorically refuse to buy any wine bottled under stelvin or worse still this abomination you describe, Michael.

Ron Lel

Salut/Hi Ron Lel,

le/on Fri, 20 Aug 2004 05:51:52 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

You mean, you LIKE your wine tasting of wet dog?

Ah well no accounting for tastes. Just remind me when you write TNs.

This represents the reactionary end of the spectrum that says "The new closures might cause some taint or degradation in the wine"

Of course that ignores the fact that corks undeniably DO cause the same thing, and with a frequncy that many find unacceptable.

Me. I'm a fence sitter. I'd be delighted to see an end to TCA spoilage (I am sensitive to it but so much that I can't try a wine that has it - you just can't possibly evaluate a TCA affected wine). OTOH, I would not want to see an alternative closure with it's own problems.

Time will tell, I suppose.

Nor are you likely to, Dan. But, a word to the wise: don't try aging wines bottled under synth corks. All objective evidence, and my own personal experience, is that wines sealed with synth corks get tired and flat quite quickly. :(

Mark Lipton

I don't know if your paper gave all of the background on why Hogue is going to screwcap. The did a study covering several years comparing natural cork with synthetic stoppers and screwcaps. To summarize, natural cork occasionally gave corked bottles, synthetics caused premature oxidation and screwcaps were the big winner. It's true that with synthetic corks you don't have TCA but trade off in many cases is that *every* bottle suffers from premature oxidation. That's why I think synthetic "corks" will prove to be an evolutionary dead end and that screwcaps and crown caps of various sorts are where we're headed. Just my two cents' worth.

- Mark W.

My personal preference, based on current knowledge:

Wines I plan to drink within 2 years of release: Stelvin Crown Synthetic Cork

Wines I plan on drinking 2-10 years from release Stelvin Crown Cork Synthetic

I'm up in the air as to wines I plan on keeping longer than 10 years, though I think I'd lean towards Stelvin still.

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Nobody in fact can understand what's happening, and why cork dork lemmings are so strong . . . ;-)

Thank you very much - still I have no idea what this wine tastes like, I guess very little makes it to Europe, alas.

M.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Can anyone with a better command of the English language than my poor self explain what this means?

Thank you in advance!

M.

Certainly Micheal, I regard the use of these closures as an abomination. To date I have not been able to lay my hands on any study which looks at the comparative ageing qualities of wines bottled under cork in comparison to those bottled under artificial closures. As I am still opening the last few '45 Bordeaux I have remaining in my cellar and am enjoying the characters that only are present in aged wine, I wonder if wines bottled with these new closures will develop as well.

Sadly I see this trend as a sop to the ever growing numbers who are not prepared or unwilling to cellar wine for extended periods. As an aside, I see the same trends in the vast majority of wines made in Australia these days - wines made for current consumption rather than for putting down.Call me old fashioned or ultra conservative if you wish, but I find these trends sad.

I found it interesting on my visit to Austria in January, that a large number of Austrian winemakers and at least one owner of a large hotel chain and his beverage manager son agree with the comments I have made above - ask them Michael.

Cheers Ron Lel

Ron

"Michael Pronay" asked

Hi Michael, Mr. Lel has *very* strong feelings against both Stelvin and (particularly) Crown caps.

His tone and tenor, and the use of the word "abomination" is emotional in the extreme.

"Abomination" (Noun)

1. Something horrible: an object of intense disapproval or dislike
2. Something shameful: something that is immoral or disgusting
3. Intense dislike: a feeling of intense dislike or disapproval towards somebody or something.

If Mr. Lel refuses to buy wine bottled under Stelvin or Crown caps, it will only serve to deny himself the finer points of excellent wine, and leave more for those of us with an open mind.

He has a mind like concrete - all mixed up - and permanently set !!

If I remember correctly, some market research about 8 years back showed that about 82% of all wine sold in Australia was consumed with in 24 hours of sale. Why would the wineries want to make wines to lay down if their market wants to consume it immediately.

I for one would never drink an Australian white with out aging it 4 or

5 years. And I do like well aged reds. I am currently working on the last of 59s and the last of my 2003s.

I just found the most diabolical synthetic cork I have yet seen. It looked like solid synthetic material with a rubber sleeve around it leaving both ends exposed. It was in a Peachy Canyon bottle that some one gave me.

I have old wines, a few dating back to the early 1800s. After a certain age, corks lose the ability to properly seal the wine, no matter how ideal the temperature and humidity you have. The only thing that saves having to recork these old wines in many cases is the very heavy coat of sealing wax that many used in the past rather than lead capsules. The wax can become very brittle and chip easily after a long time, but can be patched with new wax if necessary. I have seen corks removed from such old bottles that were heavy with wine and that shrank to about 1/2 the diameter of the bottle neck when allowed to dry well. From what I have seen, wines to be kept for a very long time would benefit much more than wines for early consumption by using a seal that is much more durable than cork. It is not difficult to find a seal that probably would last hundreds of years - for example the very soft pure gold foil. The problem is to find a seal that can be sold at a reasonable price. A better seal might be justified for the well under 1 percent of wines capable of very extended aging.

As for wines to be drunk within about 20 years, and probably after a considerably longer time, some of the commercial seals now available seem to have been well tested and seem to be adequate. I can do without cork taint, and I can think of much more interesting things to do than removing a cork - especially an old one that may be very difficult to remove whole.

My mailbox is always full to avoid spam. To contact me, erase snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net from my email address. Then add snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com . I do not check this box every day, so post if you need a quick response.

"Ron Lel" wrote

And I doubt that you will. I know that many wineries are doing their own evaluations - but, for reasons of commercial sensitivity, these would be kept confidential.

That said, I do know that the Villa Maria Group in New Zealand and Penfolds Australia have been evaluating their own trials over 10-15 years (with Stelvin on their age-worthy reds).

Call this a victory for objectivity!

Within the last year, Villa Maria (which incorporates VM, Vidal Estate and Esk Valley - all highly regarded producers of top quality reds) have decided to ditch cork altogether, and now bottle even their premium Pinot Noir and Merlot/Cabernet wines under Stelvin.

They have no concerns as to the age-worthiness of their wines (although I would be the first to agree that the industry in NZ is still relatively young and lacks the track record to contemplate cellaring any NZ red beyond

12-15 years)

Whereas you may be worried about any effect of the aging process, I am much more concerned about TCA contamination - and actively seek Stelvin closures when making a buying decision.

To me, a far greater abomination is keeping a fine a vintage Champagne or Riesling for a few years, contemplating excellent drinking - then opening it to find it completely spoiled.

I once read "The mind is just like a parachute - it only works when it is open: :-)