"Teflon is certainly unreactive enough, but it might be too plastic to keep a tight seal. For instance, the teflon tips to the plungers of Gastight syringes that we use will deform enough if the plunger is stored in the barrel to abrograte the seal of the syringe (that seal is quickly restored by banging the plunger tip on a countertop several times -- very plastic indeed). That happens over the course of a few days, so a Teflon-lined cap would surely deform and possibly lose its seal during the time needed to age wine."
I never used Teflon syringes at work, but I know other types often had problems with the seal also, perhaps for different reasons than for Teflon ones. We used pure tin foil in bottle caps, and it seemed to work very well for many things. However for some very nasty things that will react with tin, Teflon discs worked very well if you tightened the cap down well, even for very volatile liquids. In addition, metal pipe threads sealed with Teflon tape held up well and did not leak, even at very high pressures. The experimental thermodynamics people did use some pure gold gaskets in some of their combustion bombs that could produce a very high internal pressure. If gradual flow did tend to unseal the cap over a very long time, a metal disc behind the Teflon disc and a small sprong between the metal disc and inside of the cap would help keep pressure on the seal if need be. Again, I am talking only about wines that are to be kept several to many decades. If you are stuck with old bottles that have very old corks, you can always remove the capsule, clean the top, and dip it in wax several times. Of course this would not do for wine that is to be resold. I have a few very old bottles waxed. If the bottle is to be kept in a cool cellar and not moved, USP beeswax works well and is easy to apply and remove. Many old vintage Madeiras solved the cork problem by sealng the top of the bottle with a heavy coat of sealing wax instead of using a metal capsule. I have a few very old bottles thus sealed, and the wax likely is the only thing that prevents the bottles from leaking.
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le/on Sun, 30 Jan 2005 13:41:01 +0000, tu disais/you said:-
May I be pedantic here to make a point? You say that the move towards alternative closures will "decimate" the cortk industry. Well, unwittingly you may be right!! Decimate as an expression dates back to the roman legions, where disciplinary action included "decimation" it seems. "Decem" is latin for 10, and decimation meant that one person in ten was selected for punishment. As there were 100 centurions in a legion (centum means 100) this meant that 10 (decem again) would be punished - usually by being put to death. That's what decimated means, and yes, one job in ten MAY just be lost, although in fact I think that's unlikely.
Allow me to sidetrack for a moment. My wife and I are members of RSPB (for non UKians, that's similar to the US Audubon Society) and they contacted the Beeb countryfile program, with an impassioned plea for the plight of the robin, whose nesting habitat is cork oaks. One wonders who was fooling whom!
I see these two issues (jobs and robins) as a sign that after decades of complacency, the Portuguese cork industry are getting seriously concerned and coming up with ever more desperate reasons to continue to use cork closures for wine.
I agree with you that cork has many virtues, and would be all in favour of its continuing and even increasing use as a cheap and effective insulant, for example. However, over the last 40 years, we've seen the proportion of corked wines increase from an irritating but (IMO) acceptable I'm very skeptical about tastings which report failure rates of up to 30%.
Why? Because it's not your personal experience. It isn't mine either, but then we may be lucky/careful in our choice of supplier!
No, no one serious confuses TCA contamination with the other ills to which wine can succumb. That said, it may be true that in some restaurants, clients order an expensive wine (too young?) discover that it doesn't actually taste very nice and therefore try to send it back as corked. It may even be that the sommelier/manager decides to maintain a polite fiction, rathr than risk a confrontation.
Why? To keep an industry that has manifestly failed to do its job alive? If there were NO alternative, then we might just have to do so, but there IS a perfectly satisfactory alternative. In fact there are two such. Crown caps have been used for aging vintage and late bottled champagne for MANY years with no discernable ill effect, and that they're used for a minimum period for ALL "methode traditionelle" sparklers. Research has been carried out into aging wines under Stelvin for at least 10 years, with no ill effects, and perfectly satisfactory aging.
for corks, if a consequence of this is to
I'm afraid that's a specious argument. No industry has a God given right to exist. You could just as well have used that logic against the spread of personal computers, one consequence of which has been the demise of the industry of copy-typists. You could have used it against the adoption of cars, which has resulted in the demise of the industry of bargees, amongst others.
That said, it is my opinion that much of the rise in TCA contamination is due to too early harvesting of cork, and to be fair to them, they couldn't have been expected to predict the rise in demand for cork, given the very long lead time needed.
Too little, too late, I'm afraid.
come down over the past 20 years or so, and so a
using inferior cork in order to save money.
I am not sure you're right here. Firstly, cork manufacturers had no business introducing cheap corks if that resulted in the present levels of TCA, which is what is implicit in this last sentence. Secondly, I don't think it's correct. I think you'll find that prices have risen in real terms, especially at the top end of the market, while at the same time there has been a significant rise in levels of TCA contamination.
What I think is likely to happen in the cork industry is that as consumer acceptance of Stelvin becomes widespread, so more bottlers will switch. The drop in demand will reduce pressure on the industry to harvest too early. Faced with the possibility of the demise of cork as a closure, the manufacturers will eventually eliminate TCA contamination, and at that stage a new equilibrium will be reached. However, when all the new cork oak plantations begin to be fully mature, there WILL be a crisis of overproduction, and new markets will have to be found.
I don't know how true it is, but I read some time ago that bottle closures represents only 20% of the total demand for cork as a material. If that dropped to zero, it wouldn't result in the death of the industry.
But as in all spheres of life, adaptability is the prerequisite of survival. The cork industry faces competition, just as did many others in the past. Those that adapted, changed to meet demands and new circumstances and survived, and those that couldn't, didn't. It's up to the cork manufacturers to react to a new reality. They have serious competition for bottle closures, and their existing product is far from satisfactory. They'll either change, or become a niche market, catering to an ever reducing number of diehard traditionalists.
le/on Sun, 30 Jan 2005 23:21:21 +0000, tu disais/you said:-
Not half as much a blow is it would be, if every time a corked wine was poured down the drain, the consumer took legal action to recover their loss. I think there is quite a good case for action to be taken under existing consumer legislation, certainly in the UK. A product must be of "merchantable quality", and must carry out the function for which it is sold. Corks don't.
In any case, in my previous reply to you, I have dealt with the accuracy of the cork manufacturers' claim that the entire viability of life and civilisation as we know it in the Alentejo would collapse if winemakers stopped using cork as a closure material. I don't think it's true, and I think you should give some supporting evidence of it if you seek to convince us.
I'd not argue in favour if its total abandonment. What I want is to be able to choose freely, perhaps through some kind of parallel marketing strategy. Cork closures through wine merchants etc and screwtops through supermarkets.
Just as I'd not want to force you to buy screwtops if you don't want to, I'd hope that you would encourage winemakers to make both styles of closure available.
le/on Sun, 30 Jan 2005 19:52:41 +0000, tu disais/you said:-
Hi Dave, welcome!!!
Glad we've got you to delurk.
However, I'm afraid that I have to say that any artificial corks I've seen have been the very devil to pull. Even my trusty screwpull has difficulty in persuading one of those to move! Nope, for all its faults, cork has some extraordinary properties. I just don't find the current levels of contamination acceptable.
What's a matter, you'se cork dorks have nothing better to do then talk about da durability of your putzes; what is dis here a alt.ciallis.schtup newsgrope or what. All dis talk about yer schvanzes has me wonderin' vetter you ought to be sent to de adult sites for getting yer ya-ya's out.
Oh that's C O R K not C O (oy-gevalt, C) K, never mind!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
I could agree with the parallel strategy. However that might mean double inventory and stores carrying multiple's of cork and stelvins might have no choice but to reduce selection.
le/on 31 Jan 2005 11:48:42 -0800, tu disais/you said:-
Careless language on my part, trying to be too brief. Despite what Michael says, I think there is evidence that some growers/bottlers are particularly careful about their corks and that they get a statistically significant lower proportion of corked wines. That's what I meant - with the concommittant thought that retailers and restaurateurs are in a fairly good position to know whose wines are more prone, whose less. Remember also that I buy nearly all my wines from the grower so in my mind, supplier=grower.
There is a major difference between cork taint on the one hand and leakage of screwcaps on the other hand.
The first problem is practically unsolvable, because of its random nature, while screw-caps leaking occur either because there has been a mechanical impact or because of sloppy manutention and quality control during bottling.
The latter problem - as with the occurence of reductive characters
- will disappear after producers will have their wine-making and their operating of bottling machinery brought up to where it should be.
Leaking screw-caps are *not* a fault of the technology *per se*.
Just curious: Is anything even modestly certain known about the mechanism or chemistry that causes TCA to get into the cork? I remember references to bacteria, chlorine, cleaning techniques etc. but I wonder if there is something definitive known by now.
Corks, once a living organism, can harbor spores that are related to TCA. Cork producers sterilize corks to eliminate the problem; however, if one spore survives (which happens), TCA evolves. There are no producers who are either immune or prone to TCA. TCA happens to all producers. One would think that quality corks (they do have "quality" ratings, and the producers pay for that) would eliminate TCA. Not so. There's no elimination short of finding other substances, and we're in that process. Plastic corks have been tried (hard to get out, then put back in the bottle). Many producers are giving screw caps a try as a possible answer. We'll see. Winemakers have shared with me (I'm an industry publicist, so I interview these guys on all matters relating to the industry) that there's a chemistry that happens in the bottle with bottle aging. The small amount of aeration that occurs from a cork won't happen with screw caps. So, the wine's not going to be the same as if it had been in a bottle with cork. Only time will tell. We're in the experimental stages of "choice" development, and your purchasing power will dictate where this all goes.
Not quite true. To be precise, the aeration through corks varies a good deal. With screwtops the variation is a lot smaller. It is at the low end of the porosity of cork, but within the cork range. For numbers, see:
le/on 6 Feb 2005 09:27:25 -0800, tu disais/you said:- as a
And you're claiming neutral objectivity with respect to wine glasses whose design you're working on?
Right.
By the way, screwcaps do allow oxygen to enter the bottle - slowly. The REAL reasons winery owners are reticent about changing are that they would need to put in entirely new bottling lines (expensive) and that screwcaps aren't yet perceived by most consumers are being acceptable.
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