Stelvin or not?

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A quote from a previous post:

"but best of all: buy wine with a Stelvin cap!

MAUOMBO"

NO! Now I am really interested in hearing a discussion on this, Some weeks ago I spoke to a number of top Austrian winemakers. Universally the opinion was that Stelvin is not for them. Their comments were that IF your cork producer is reliable, it is far better for ageing wine to age it under cork. To date NONE of the studies I have read compare say 10 yo wines under stelvin and decent cork; the studies I have looked at say that stelvin wines are fresher. Perhaps, but I prefer the aged character of 10 yo rieslings, let alone decent Bordeaux and Burgundy. My contention is that many New World winemakers do not taste enough aged wines. In Australia, where I come from,

98% of wine bought is consumed within 48 hours. Sure stelvin is fine for that, but for those of us who like to cellar wine - well, I refuse to buy stelvin sealed wines. What do others think?

Ron Lel

Reply to
Ron Lel

Ian, VBG, total agreement. While it is true some cork producers are more careful than others, that's only a way of reducing the risk.

Again, total agreement. While I hear lots of arguments based on anecdotal evidence about whether cork is necessary for aging ("slow diffusion" of oxygen, or whatnot), I see no reason I should have to deal (as I have within last month) with corked bottles of Menetou-Salon, Qba Riesling, or inexpensive Chianti. And I'm probably on the insensitive end of the TCA-spectrum! It even occurs to me that (to those arguing for more reputable cork producers) that if all of the 95+% of wines that are intended to drink within 2-3 years of bottling were to switch to stelvins (or crown caps, like my Frick recently!), maybe those producers could be more careful (lots of trees to choose from) and even our classed-growth Bdx and GC Burgs would be safer.

Cheers,

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Reply to
Dale Williams

But what would I do with all my nice cork removers like Laguioles and Le Crueset leverPulls? :-)

Reply to
dick

Well, you could mount them on a wall for display, or keep them for your pre-2004 wines. :)

BTW, am I the only person who finds that synthetic corks (I've opened several recently, from Verget and other producers) are really tight/hard to get out with a waiter's corkscrew, and then hard to get off the worm? Not to mention that they usually won't go back in bottle if you don't finish. :( Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Reply to
Dale Williams

I understand Laguiole is coming out with a set of Stelvin pliers to fill just that need ;-)

Reply to
Bill Spohn

Nope, you're not the only person, Dale. Also, do not EVER try aging a wine bottled under a synthetic cork: they apparently scavenge all the free SO2 and the wine dies far more rapidly than it would under any other closure. I found this out the hard way a year or two ago with a '96 Siduri Pinot Noir. :(

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

And Ron, since you come from Australia, go ask Penfolds the results of cork vs stelvin trials they have been conducting for over ten years on their premium reds.

You may well see even Grange bottled under Stelvin at some time in the future.

Reply to
st.helier

I've found it depends on the synthetic. Unfortunately, Supremecorq (many colors, looks like it's molded from "curds" of some sort, almost incompressible) is the market leader and between it and its clones is the most common one. This one is truly hell on corkscrews in general

- and on Ah-so's, for that matter. OTOH, Nomocorq and Neocork, two outwardly similar synthetics (relatively spongy center, slippery extruded outer sleeve, usually more or less natural color) are fine with normal openers.

- Mark W.

Reply to
Mark Willstatter

Would you please tell me and the makers of prestigious, but corked, wines which corks to avoid? I'm fairly sure that information would be immensely valuable to all in the wine industry. Sincerely yours, Anders

Reply to
Anders Tørneskog

I have read that one in seven corks are bad on a world wide basis. That number most likely includes some very old corks and some very new corks. One vintner whose wines I buy regularly seems to have found the supplier of the bad corks. I have experienced a bad cork rate from that vintner of about one in four and that would all be very young wine.

I confronted the wine maker at St Francis about four years back about their plastic corks and the trouble that I was having getting them off a ScrewPull or LeverPull and he told me that they were on their fourth iteration of plastic and were not going to give up because their cork supply was so bad. The planet is full of wines without Stelvin so why bother.

Reply to
Bill

Heya, Bill! Been a while since I've last seen you here -- I hope that all is going well for you. I've heard numbers between 5 and 15% bandied about, but I'll bet that it depends a lot on who's doing the counting, given the incredible diversity of TCA senstivity in the populace.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

Those are the injection molded closures. However, I'm experimenting with extruded or co-extruded low density polyethylene closures (Neocork and Tage, and several other manufacturers) which are much easier to extract and to get off the corkscrew. The jury is still out as to whether they do a great corking job over the long term, but over the short term they seem to do just fine in terms of keeping wine in and air out. I've had trouble with the mechanics of bottling with them, because they're extremely sensitive to +/- headspace pressure, but this year I'll be trying some new versions which might do a better job in that regard.

Craig Winchell GAN EDEN Wines

Reply to
Craig Winchell/GAN EDEN Wines

Salut/Hi Ron Lel,

When I first read your post, I interposed a couple of letters into the country you talked about!

le/on Mon, 09 Feb 2004 08:51:14 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Then you have been talking to different "top Austrian producers" than Michael Pronay. I await his trenchant remarks with interest. He's an eminent Austrian wine journalist who writes here frequently. I will be fascinated to read his comments.

Reply to
Ian Hoare

Salut/Hi Peter Muto,

Can I ask a favour please.

When replying to a post could you try hard to trim the original message so that just enough remains for a reader to know what it is you're replying to. Otherwise we can easily end up in a silly situation with 125 lines of quote and 1 line of comment!

le/on 9 Feb 2004 10:03:21 -0800, tu disais/you said:-

Yup, there's little doubt that's true, and it's not only in the Antipodes, I know of quite a number of French producers doing it for export.

I can live with that, though I have some hesitation over top white Burgundies and for top sweet wines.

overally quality of corks

high-grade cork is quite reliable, the issue with

Unfortunately it's not as simple as that, would that it were. I _think_ that what will happen is that as demand for cork closures goes down, so the AGE of the oaks from which cork is stripped, will go back up again, and that it is this which may reduce the proportion of TCA tainted bottles. However, I do agree that one way or another, cork manufacturers will HAVE to get their house in order, or lose out completely. If it means that the price of corks increases dramatically, but with a guaranteed absence of TCA, then the selection process will take place almost automatically.

Just to lob one awkward little factlet. It's not generally known that for MANY years (like >25), vintage champagne has been aged under crown caps? So aging definitely DOES take place under a hermetic seal.

Reply to
Ian Hoare

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