No more cork taints for sparklers!

"Ron Lel" wrote

Hmmm - Ron - St.Helier is my name - and no more a pseudonym than Ron Lel.

And do I know much about the topic of Stelvin capsules and their effect of the aging process? - well, obviously perhaps a little more than you - I have actually spoken with winemakers on both side of the Tasman who have been trialing them for many years.

I see you are in Australia - go talk to Penfolds - and get some insight from their trials going back 15-20 years - with Grange I believe !!!!!!!

You see, you are in the (very) fortunate minority who drinks older Bordeaux - but I have experienced TCA contamination in a 1976 Ch. Margaux, and a 1990 J J Prum WS Auslese and a 198? Henscke Mt Edelstone Shiraz - and also a 1985 Laurent Perrier Grande Siecle Champagne.

I would have accepted a Crown Cap or Stelvin closure on each and every one, just to have an unspoiled wine to sip and remember.

If you have taken umbrage at my smart-arsed sense of humour, I apologise - I forgot the smiley :-)

snipped

OK. Accepted. Sorry about the pseudonym comment as well. Actually I do know a fair bit about the topic as I (we - friends etc), have been looking at and discussing and debating this for some time. You might be surprised at the large number of winemakers and those in the industry who agree with me, however. I have already intimated those to whom I spoke in Austria early this year. Perhaps when you next come to Oz you should chat to people like Phil Jones of Bass Phillip as well.

Ron Lel

Hi, Mark -

That's probably due to the SO2 "scalping" effect some of those closures have. The manufacturers are aware of the problem and are taking steps to address it.

I have one vintage bottled under the "new, improved" Supremecorq. It went into the bottle on January 23, 2004 at 55 ppm free SO2. I plan to retest it soon. I'll post the results.

Tom S

You're mixing two different issues there, and injecting a fair amount of confusion.

The first issue is whether any closure other than natural cork is capable of both protecting the wine from spoilage within the bottle, while allowing the slow development (aging) within.

The second issue concerns current buying trends and the industry's response to them.

As for the first, I have conducted my own evaluation of screwcaps over a 15 year storage period. The wine was a 1984 Cabernet Sauvignon, bottled under both cork and screwcaps and compared a few years ago. There was practically no difference between the two bottlings. Also, they had both aged very nicely.

I won't speak to the latter issue except to say that many wineries are still producing wines worthy of aging, and I am still buying wines to lay down for future enjoyment - BUT I'd be much more confident of that enjoyment if they were sealed with something technologically improved over a chunk of tree bark!

Tom S

The wine industry is very resistant to change, both because it involves taking a risk with a substantial amount of money, as well as modifying the attitudes of its customers. I'm not sure which is more daunting.

Change is inevitable, however, and addressing cork taint is an issue whose time has come.

Consider the fact that crown caps have been an industry standard for many decades - not only in the breweries, but also the Champagne houses. Many Champagnes rest for up to a decade in tirage, sealed by crown caps, with no decline in quality and an appreciation in bottle bouquet and flavor. It's not much of a leap in faith to expect that other wines would fare as well if sealed in similar fashion.

Tom S

If you would do me the favour to give the names I most gratefully would.

Not to be condescending, but being in the business for over two decades, I guess I have met personally more winemakers than you might even know by name. I do know exactly what's going on in Austria. Many of the top growers would prefer to switch to screw-caps immediately - if the public acceptance was there, which, for the moment, is not. But things are changing - slowly, but they do.

That's an article I wrote last summer on the subject:

Sorry, in German only.

M.

Salut/Hi Ron Lel,

le/on Sat, 21 Aug 2004 00:08:50 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Why? Such an emotional term, implies horror at the least. Surely any closure has one end and one end only. To allow the wine inside to mature to it's best potential. This isn't emotional except in so far as the wine (expensive) is spoilt, or not allowed to show well.

Do you like old champagne? Bollinger RD can spend 25 years under crown caps, without any traces of spoiling, is that an abomination?

This is just my supposition but... One hundred years from now, natural corks will only exist on old bottlings in connoiseurs cellars. I don't think anyone of that generation will even be aware of what they missed, which is to say, very little.

Dan-O

Much snipped

Of course I do Ian. As I stated previously, what concerns me most is that some winemakers - amongst then many Australians - have adopted this new technology without first looking at its ramifications. OK, perhaps the term "abomition" is an exagerration, however.... Over here we have a number of so called "premium" reds as well as many whites now being bottled under stelvin and similar capsules. The only information that I have been able to glean to date has been some of the very few bits and pieces released by Penfolds, and they are really far and few between.

My concerns are these: I greatly enjoy the qualities that aged wines get, for example the honeyed characters in old Hunter semillons and the kerosene charcters in Clare rieslings. Is there a guarantee that whites bottled under stelvin will mature the same way? Of course there is not, because no one has done enough definitive studies. Now, as I said, we have premium reds bottled under these seals; how will they age and what characters will they get?

As I stated in a previous post, I really believe that the full scale adoption of these seals is due to the fact that most wines are consumed shortly after purchase. Someone in a previous post mentioned the statistic that 80% of wines are consumed within 24 hours of purchase in Australia. I believe the figure is closer to 96% actually. I guess you can't blame winemakers for catering to this market rather than the "old farts" like myself who buy wines to put down. I read a disturbing comment by Len Evans , the doyen of the Australian wine industry, a while ago that many modern winemakers do not even know what an aged wine tastes like. I find that sad, and I guess from reading your posts and those of others who post here that you would also find this sad.

Cheers Ron

Salut/Hi Ron Lel,

le/on Sun, 22 Aug 2004 08:02:57 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

GOOD, so do I, and I was amazed when I discovered that they were sealed under crown caps for all that time, just like any vulgar bottle of beer. I think that in fact (and without trying to seem either condescending or arrogant) you may simply be unaware of the extent or length of experience with alternative closures - as I was in the case of champagne.

Ah... now we're getting down to rational discussion ;-)))

I would in fact dispute your suggestion that they have rushed like lemmings towards alternative closures. Penfolds have trials going back many years for example. Winemakers worldwide know perfectly well that it will be hard to persuade their "top end" customers to change. They aren't going to make as radical a change as switching to Stelvin without being certain that the benefits will outweigh the problems.

Ron, believe me. The trials have been done. The fact that you've been unable to glean much information is because most of the winemakers are highly reluctant either to admit they are trialling alternatives, and even more reluctant to share their results. God knows why.

So do I, and if I thought for ONE moment that these qualities would be lost, I'd have a very different perspective.

This is a topic that comes up fairly regularly (use google groups to check up) and in the two or three times that I've taken part, my position has changes somewhat, as I've had occasion to find out more and taste the results of some of the experiments. Originally I was in favour of synthetic closures for all wines designed to be drunk in less than 5 years, but highly hesitant about wines whose character depended upon aging. Regular readers with long memories will confirm this.

An experience about 15 months ago, was very influential. I attended (together with Michael Pronay, but also a stellar group of experts from various fields) a tasting of closures. There were some 60 or 70 wines on tasting, many whites, but also reds, some with little bottle age, but - much more importantly, a series of some 20 wines with very considerable bottle age. In all cases the wines had been bottles "in parallel", ie, one sample (in one case there were about 10) under cork and another under an artificial closure. We were tasting blind, therefore we didn't know which was which and what the artificial closure had been. We were trying to judge which wine of each pair was "better" and why.

Of the wines we tasted, two showed up immediately as corked, so we were able to "cheat". I never did see the final results, but what was immediately evident to me was that there was no clear, wide & consistent difference between samples. I couldn't put my hand on my heart and say "ah well, in each pair, one was always fresher", or "one was always rounder" or any such global difference. In the case of the older wines, both samples showed very similar aging characteristics, any differences I could detect were the sort of differences you would expect to get between individual bottle at some age. Michael Pronay could no doubt tell you more - he's much more organised than I am.

Yes. Judging by what I've tasted, why not? RD Champagne ages fine, and that's hermetically sealed.

Shall we rephrase that... You haven't seen any results of defintive studies.

age and what characters will they

Hae a look at Michael's comments in previous threads, not only have Penfold's done tests, bu so have several top flight Bordeaux chateaux.

Well, that's obviously going to count, and in the case of 99% of wines, I think there's no doubt at ALL that Stelvin is the right solution. All the evidence I've seen quoted here and elsewhere is that our fears (for I am also an oenonecrophile) over the very long term aging of wines under Stelvin are unjustified.

I'm not in the least bit surprised. Actually, I'd say that's true for the majority of winemakers world wide, even in regions where wine is/was traditionally very long lived. It is in the nature of things that wine makers of all people spend their time tasting young wines. I've long argued that this deforms their ability to taste and judge age-ability.

So I'm not particularly worried that Oz winemakers haven't ever tasted properly mature wines. Actually, I don't think many winemakers can tell whether their wine is going to age gracefully over 50 years, or whether it will dry out and fall apart after 20. I know that when Michael P and I have talked about this here, we've agreed that a wine can seem to have all the characteristics that will allow for a very long life - plenty of tannins, good acidity both of which will sustain a long life, and a great knot of fruit that over the years will disentangle and become the majestic thing we all hope to taste, but that in fact what happens sometimes is that the wine doesn't live up to its promise.

What I hope you'll be prepared to do is to go patiently to people like Penfolds and ask if they ever put on parallel tastings of wines bottled under cork and stelvin, so that you can judge for yourself. I don't think this is easy to arrange, and perhaps someone like Martin Field could help.

years under crown

abomination?

they were sealed

bottle of beer. I

condescending or

length of experience

champagne.

adopted this new

OK, perhaps the term

rushed like lemmings

back many years for

will be hard to

going to make as

certain that the

been some of the very

really far and few

you've been unable

winemakers are highly

and even more

Large snip Hi Ian - see piece on the history of screw caps at

particularly the reference to Yalumba's long-term experimentation. Cheers! Martin

I can believe that. It's the same thing you have to watch out for when buying Perrier or other sparkling water. If the cap gets dented by way of bad handling, all the fizz escapes and you end up with flat water. In the case of wine, a dented cap lets air into the bottle and ruins the contents.

It's rather easy to do a visual inspection of the bottle prior to purchase so as to determine whether or not the seal is likely to be intact. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that a blind person could quite easily discriminate between a leaker and a sound closure. That's not true for a cork finished bottle.

Tom S