Cork and screw-cap same product bottlings

Quite a few producers here in Austria do: Sattlerhof, Jurtschitsch (Sonnhof), Peter Andreas Dolle (PADO), Bernhard Ott, Karl Fritsch

- and certainly quite a few more. I guess I have seen screw-caps (and Vino-Lok glass stoppers) from around 50 producers over here. Quite many, I suppose, offer the same wine under cork and screw-cap (or glass).

Btw, Willi Sattler has done a comparative tasting with a 2003 sauvignon, under cork, glass and synthetic stopper, after one year in bottle. The results were clear: First, the cork stoppered bottle corked slightly. The back-up bottle was magnificent; the glass-stoppered bottle even more so (just a hint of better delineated fruit and slightly more precision), while the wine under plastic was a catastrophy: Dumb, slightly oxidised, no fruit: In a blind tasting one wouldn't even had guessed the grape variety.

M.

I've never run into this. Are the two bottlings sold at the same preice?

In the US, Plupjack markets their top Cabernet in both cork and screwcap. Palliser Estate in New Zealand has also exported both cork- and Stelvin-finished bottles of their Sauvignon Blanc to the US.

Mark Lipton

] Leo Bueno wrote: ] > I am aware that several wineries bottle only their lower-end stuff ] > with screwcaps, but won't take a change on their flagship products. ] > ] > Wondering is anyone is bottling some products with *both* screwcap and ] > cork and selling them side by side. ] ] In the US, Plupjack markets their top Cabernet in both cork and ] screwcap. Palliser Estate in New Zealand has also exported both cork- ] and Stelvin-finished bottles of their Sauvignon Blanc to the US. ]

IIRC Plumpjack has been doing this for a few years now.

Wasn't there a recent thread about the possibility of ordering Ch. d'Agassac en primeur with screwcaps, too?

-E

Last year Seppelt did just that but with a beer bottle cap instead of a screwcap - my tasting notes:

Seppelt Show Sparkling Shiraz 1994 $65.

To be released July 1 2004 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.

Martin, Is it common in Oz for producers to make late disgorged sparklers such as this?

Mark Lipton

Yes.

M.

I posted the fact. I myself have ordered two cases with screw-toppped finish. *I* don't need any further proof about the imperfection of cork bark.

M.

Calera Viognier 2002.

Hi Mark - not to my knowledge.

Cheers! Martin

To what do you attribute the problems associated with the plastic sealed wine. Do you think it was a reaction to the plastic itself, or poor wine storage/handling?

The plastic has been shown to react with the SO2 in the wine, thereby robbing the wine of its principal antioxidant and promoting oxidation.

Mark Lipton

No storage and handling probs. It is either so, as Mark said, that plastic reacts in one way or the other in reducing free SO2 levels faster, or it's a matter of elasticity problems that allows O2 to permeate which leads to sinking SO2 levels.

Anyhow, these findings are not new and confirmed by all comparative studies done in Klosterneurburg (AT), Geisenheim (DE) and, most recently in the AWRI, and other trials in AU.

M.

They've also been confirmed -- lamentably -- in my own house, where a '96 Siduri Pinot Noir bottled under a plastic cork was flat, tired and lifeless when opened in 2000, in stark contrast to its cork-finished sister bottlings.

Mark Lipton