Newbie.....cork?

Very common. St. Francis (Sonoma), amongst others, have been using this type of cork for several years. I've been finding them in other wines (Behrens & Hitchcock I think has a black cork). The debate is still out on what's best. The old school claims the cork allows the smallest amount of air to penetrate, achieving good aging. Plumpjack pushes the screwtop, even Chateau Latour is experimenting with a 'glass top' (only in their back rooms).

I believe the artificial corks work well on the young wines (no taint). However, I do like to pull a cork out of the bottle and find it saturated with sparkling tartrates on a 20 year old bottle. The saturation on the cork gives me some indication of the storage. I don't smell corks, I smell the wine. I examine the cork for damage and staining to determine how the bottle was stored. I don't think artificial corks reveal much.

Australia is the most progressive. The most recent item I've read includes using extreme pressure to destroy the taint (comparable to 20K feet below the ocean surface). Several regions in Australia have adopted screw top and artificial corks as standard practice for their given regions.

The most recent item to hit stores are box wines with mylar like bags. The bags have a spout at the bottom. The bag collapses on itself, never allowing the wine to become exposed to air. Hardy's (Australian) is marketing a Shiraz and Chardonnay. The key to their strategy is to put better quality wines into the box. Each box has the equivalent of 4 bottles of wine. I've tasted it, and I can't complain. The experiment I did with Hardy's showed the wine does last at least 3 months. I drink my wine too quickly for this ever to mean anything to me, but I can imagine it succeeding in other ways (wines by the glass at restaurants, etc...). They just need to raise it another notch. The wines are fine, but not great.

P.S. I recently opened a '53 Doisy Daene, the cork splintered. No effect on the wine, but it was extremely effort driven to carefully remove the cork a piece at a time. Artificial corks may prove to have value in aging. I'm sure the old school folks would advise the use of hot tongs and a wet feather and just avoid the cork issue all together. regards.

Ausone.

The Ausone glass seal is far from being marketable. So far only a few bottles have been filled on an experimental basis.

There is another glass stopper (which involves not glass on glass

- which would not be tight -, but the same lining als screwcaps, a thin layer of PVDC, polyvinyldene chloride) manufactured by the German branch of ALCOA:

It's not yet availabler, but many growers are carrying on experiment on 500 to 1000 bottle lots.

M.

Has any winemaker done systematic testing -- bottling the same wine at the same time, some with cork and some with artificial, laying them down the same, and then opening them over a period of years to try to discern a difference (preferably double-blind)?

Of course, they have done so for ages, and it's been done at viticultural schools around the world all the time.

M.

With what results?

That wine under synthetic stoppers ages prematurely. After 12 months many wines taste older, after 24 months premature oxidation is discernible on all wines.

M.

Which implies that they are not truly hermetic like cork stoppers.

Mike

True. But: Cork stoppers aren't always 100% hermetic, too, even if quite more than synthetics. You can have premature oxidation with cork stoppers (cf. AWI research).

M.

Hi Michael, this would imply that Stelvin screwcaps are superior to artificial corks? My impression is that you can safely store wine for 30 years under a good screwcap. Anders

Of course, but a perfect cork is completely airtight (and TCA-free)....

Mike