Mold on cork

I have seen similar things with some port bottles. My first question is: what type of corks are you using? my second question is: is it possible that you left a wine residue on the top of the cork? Once the sufite reacts off, any remaining wine on the outside surface of the cork could certainly mold up if mold is in the air. Remedy options 1) clean the corks and bottle tops with b-brite or something. Possiblly use a light solution of bleach as a last resort 2) remove the corks and replace them with new corks. Before removing the old cork, use a 10% bleach solution to kill anything there. Let the bleach stand wet for 10 minutes, then rinse well. This will prevent contanimation into the new closure. If you are really worried, option 2 is the most conservative, but 1 is pretty easy and you can do them all at once. BTW, how do you know that it is mold? Maybe it is mildew. Maybe it is dried seepage past the cork? you could see the latter since it is a clear glass bottle.

It could very well be mildew... They have a bit of a mildew smell to them?? There really is no sepage... What I'm noticeing is along the cork on its sides. The top of the corks are dry and appear fine. They are the best real corks I could get from st. pats... Put in with an Itialian floor corker. I like your sugestion on useing bleach. I fill my bottles with a small hose and it is possible I had wine residue along the neck of the bottle and that is molding/mildewing?? Do you usually wipe the inside of the necks down before you sink the corks?

OK. now I am confused. you are saying that the offending substance is on length of the cork, and you can see it through the bottle. I thought it was on the end. Bleach wont help you, since you cant get the bleach there. You're sufiting your corks, right? Are you using the natural corks? I use the natural corks for my port because supposedly they were 7 year corks compared to the shorter life aglomerated corks that I normally use. I must say, however, that the aglomerated corks don't give me the problem like the other natural corks, since the natural corks i get aren't of the highest quality. try a new cork. I don;t think you can grow mold or mildew between the cork and glass. I'll ask around, but if the cork is clean and the glass is clean, there is nothing there to grow. hmmmm....

There needs to be air for this to grow, replace the corks or bottles. Sometimes the mold that they make the bottle in will have a ridge inside too, you can see it on clear bottles. If the cork does not expand fully and make intimate contact with the bottle this can happen. Don't worry about cleaning necks when inserting, the cork will do that on it's way in. If you replace corks swab out the area where the mold was growing with sulfite.

Joe

I've had this as a result of a high-humidity problem. Cork exterior surfaces and at the cork/bottle contact point rim showed some growth of something. No leakage around the cork was visible.

My problem stemmed from too much humidity. It was the summer, and I'm lucky enough to have an area that's temperature controlled, but the way I control it doesn't also give me humidity control. So in the summer, my wine was being stored in a very cold sauna!

I gave the cork surfaces a light brush with a chlorine solution, then made sure that I kept the humidity down where I store my wine using "Damp-rid" (any dampness reducing product would likely work. Haven't seen the problem come back.

Rob