rapid aging

I am no expert, but I am under the impression that the main purpose or "aging" any liquor in oak barrels is to impart an oak flavor which is sort of like that of vanilla. In my experience, aging wine in glass bottles does nothing good and, if the bottle is corked, it will impart a cork flavor or, worse, the wine will spoil. It makes me wonder how stupid the tradition of corking wine bottles really is.

Many winemakers in New Zealand and other places have moved to screw caps for pretty much all wine varieties. The theory is that they bottle it when they like it, not a bit before. That way, the wine the like is the wine you get. :) Probably helps them keep for as long or longer than they would have under cork. You never break a cork, or have to push a cork into the bottle too. :)

IME (as a consunmer only :) ), they are great. :) I have never had an "off" wine from a screw top bottle.

"Bruce Sinclair" wrote in message news:jlg3dq$a6a$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...

It makes me wonder how

Screw caps on bottles in Australia is now almost universal.

I find myself using a cork screw less and less - perhaps once a fortnight - on imported bottles or on Australian wine from the early '00s.

One interesting side effect of this trend is that I've noticed lots of 2nd hand cork screws for sale at op shops (thrift shops).

Another is that I hardly ever encounter corked wine any more - hooray! Used to be about one in a dozen - a disgraceful and expensive blight on the wine industry.

I can report that the only minor "off" note I've found in screw capped bottles is an infrequent faint note of reductive sulphur on first opening. This dissipates rapidly.

Cheers!

Martin

If we are talking about wine, that might be ONE of the reasons for ageing in oak. I am not sure I'd say it is the main one.

That is not my experience, and not the experience of many other wine lovers who are prepared to pay a premium for an older vintage. You need to start with a decent wine of course. Cheap wines will most likely go downhill with time in bottle - and ageing in barrel probably wouldn't help much either!

The cork is a great innovation compared to stuffing an oily rag into the top of a jar (that's how it started). I tend to agree we can do better now, but it is still a controversial subject.

That is not my experience, and not the experience of many other wine lovers who are prepared to pay a premium for an older vintage.

Does your experience involve tasting the same batch of wine before and after aging in glass bottles? If "yes," how did you you remember the previous flavor so well and how do you know that your taste buds didn't change in the time interval. If "no," exactly how do you know?

I propose the following experiment:

1. Buy two bottles of wine of the same recently made batch.
2. Put one bottle in a good wine cellar.
3. Pour the other bottle into a suitable container and store it in liquid nitrogen. Save the empty bottle.
4. Wait maybe 20 years.
5. Defrost the frozen wine and pour it back into the bottle.
6. Taste the two wines within a short interval of time.
7. Which tasted better?

Oh, really? Pretend that you are a cave man with an IQ greater than

1. Oily Rag

1. Cork Plug
2. Cork Plug Soaked in Melted Bee's Wax

no not

I th>I am no expert, but I am under the impression that the main purpose or

I think it is a lot more complicated than that. From what i know [which is not very much] the aging process has a *lot* of reactions [one is of course the taste of wood], which are not totally well understood. Right not it's more closer to magic than science.

agreed

The plastic plugs are great.

"Newsgroups: alt.food.wine, sci.chem From: Mike Tommasi Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:45:53 +0200 Local: Fri, Apr 6 2012 11:45 am Subject: Re: rapid aging"

I AM NOT DELIBERATELY CROSS POSTING, YOU MORON! IT WAS MY INTENTION TO ONLY POST TO AND FROM SCI.CHEM OF THE GOOGLE USENET PORTAL AND I HAD NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OF MY WRITINGS APPEARING ELSEWHERE. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO CROSS-POST AND I SUSPECT THE OP IS RESPONSIBLE. BUT, NOW THAT I KNOW THAT MY WRITING APPEARS IN ALT.FOOD.WINE, I HEREBY TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SAY THAT ALT.FOOD.WINE IS LARGELY COMPOSED OF MORONS AND YOUR (PLURAL) HIVE MENTALITY IS INCREDIBLY STUPID. HERE, WE ARE MOSTLY SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS.

I take the position that the main purpose is simple and the lesser purposes are complicated. Sometimes woods other than oak are used. I am going to guess that selective absorption and selective adsorption are involved which are, of course, complicated. Neither, is expected to occur in glass bottles.

The obvious question is, "Can the deleterious effects of cork be negated by soaking the cork in molten bee's wax?" I point out that, for a very long, milk cartons were made of cardboard soaked in wax.

As you would say, QED...

Agreed; you are a moron, QED.

No, the question regards aging in bottles. If you could cut 20 years down to 2, that would obviously be of great value. Then, what reactions are occurring in the bottle, and is it possible to accelerate that, with a magic enzyme?

-- Rich

As my primary school teacher used to say, when we were tossing names around at each other: "What you say is what you are".

And, Pee-wee Herman used to say, "I know you are, but, what am I?" Whatever validity such statements have are scientifically explained by the psychological phenomenon known as "projection." See

Examine the facts. Mike Tommasi falsely and too verbosely accused me of cross posting. He does not deserve to save face. He deserves to have his nose rubbed in it like a dog who pooped on the rug. Incidentally, I am not a civil engineer (pun intended).

My teacher would have been a moron to explain projection to first-graders.

Whatever you are or not, it's your responsibility to know where what you write goes. As they say, "ignorance is no excuse". You *did* cross post, so Mike's accusation was not false. And if anything was verbose, it was your unwarranted shouting, Mr non-civil engineer.

To paraphrase my earlier post, all (or most) reactions that occur in bottles are considered 'bad'. That's why many/most winemakers are now putting the vast bulk of their production into screw top bottles. The 'bad' reactions are reduced, and the wine tastes like they want it to. IME, this is a very good thing. :)

Who are "they?" In Illinois, USA, almost everyone who voted for Rod Blagojevich for Governor had no idea that he was a crook who would be impeached and sent to prison. Under your "ignorance is no excuse" premise, his electorate should also be sent to jail. And, his electorate almost certainly includes Barrack Obama because he campaigned for Rod Blagojevich.

Not at all. Many reactions that take place in the bottle are desirable. To use the most obvious one, the cross-linking of tannins (by at least two different pathways) leads to the reduction of astringent flavors in red wine and a more palatable beverage for most people. The deleterious reactions mostly involve the unwanted ingress of oxygen, though an ongoing debate concerns whether some amount of oxygen ingress is a positive for the wine. To the extent that they control oxygen ingress more effectively, screwcaps are a positive development in the sealing of wine bottles.

Mark Lipton (a wine loving Ph. D. chemist)

:)

Yep ... but ... can the wine maker not allow the aging process in their large containers to continue past what they would have before screw tops, so that the wine they bottle is the wine they want you to have ?

My understanding is that they now do age past what they would have, and because they know there will be very limited changes once bottled, can leave it till they think it's ready.

I do note however, that the wine they still bottle under corks is predominantly reds. :) :)