Re: A few 1985s in large formats

From what I have seen at Pommery's caves in Reims, they have very large bottles "sur pupitre", something I have not seen at any other champagne house. If memory serves me rigt, the other houses I have been to (Bollinger, Castellane, Heidsieck M., Joseph Perrier, Krug, Laurent-Perrier, Moët, Mumm, Piper-H., Pol Roger, Roederer, Ruinart, Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot, and the coop of Mailly) either don't commercialise formats larger than magnums or do a transvasement.

I don't know up to which size Pommery works, but I am sure they do

M.

Thank you for clarification.

And I will certainly accept your inviation un de ces jours !

M.

And the even larger 'Godzilla'.

Happy 50th, Michael!

First, happy 50th. You must have had several people to help you celebrate, considering the amount of wine those several large bottles contained.

I have had champagne that is difficult to open, but usually the champagne pliers work. I did once resort to an over-sized vice-grip pliers that clamp onto just about anything with very high pressure - they usually are used for turning large metal pipes.

At one time there were some Italian wines that had corks compressed so extremely that one might nearly mistake them for wooden pegs. I ruined a screw pull on one - the screw stretched about an inch and curved to one side. I have a very old heavy metal corkscrew made in Germany that will work when all else fails. Above the screw is a threaded metal rod on which the handle can turn. One first locks the handle and turns to sink the screw in the cork. Then one unlocks the handle and turns it. This slowly draws the cork without undue effort - unless it pulls the center out of the cork. In any event, something is going to come out. The worst kind of cork probem for me is when the cork is very old and tends to crumble, but yet seems to be glued to the sides of the neck. If the screw pull starts to crumble the cork, I next switch to the type with two metal blades that push down between the cork and neck. If you can get these in, rotation then often will cut the cork loose.

My mailbox is always full to avoid spam. To contact me, erase snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net from my email address. Then add snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com . I do not check this box every day, so post if you need a quick response.

There was so much leftover (food & wine) that we spontaneousley decided to continue on Sunday, yesterday, which turned into the warmest day in Vienna until now (34°C, 93°F). This spring/summer has been terrible until now: The warmest May, June, and July for ages. Vienna on average has just 10 days per year with temperatures over 30°C (86°F) - this year we have already more than 30!

It depends how you define "works". In this case it would simply have turned the head of the cork off from the part in the bottle.

That happened to me too, with a bottle of sparkling (don't remember where it came from) years ago.

That type would have worked, too. But I don't have one - I guess I should look for one. Anyhow, in this case it would only have workes with the top of the cork cut off.

What was in the neck came out in two slices: First a piece of cork and some crumbles. The rest, a ring stuck to the glass, was brought out with my waiter's friend type.

What I found to work well with these corks is the standard screwpull without the outside part, just worm & handle, used carefully as a T-type corkscrew. The worm has a larger diameter than normal worms, and with care one can get out corks quite well. For one reason or the other, I never really became friend to the "Ah-so" double blade cork-drawer, but then this could be because of European bottles (at least in the past) frequently having slightly inward bended rims the Ah-so tended to scratch off.

M.