Variations in Humidity

processes taking place in the year(s) subsequent to bottling strongly argue for the influx of new oxygen -- through or around the cork, as the case may be.

Thanks for the reply Mark. Between a slew of grading and this latest storm (lots of wet snow), this is the first chance I've had to reply.

Tom Schellberg

Just a point of amusement, but if anyone read US's _Vintage_ magazine about

-- Max

By the way I met an experienced food writer living in Andorra -- British by birth -- who asserted that the population (circa 50,000) all had the individual authority to close the borders on request -- makes thieves think twice before visiting, he said.

I put shipwreck and wines into Google and came up with:

______________________________________

This should add some more complexity to this discussion. I have followed this thread with interest, but I decided I had little to add other than speculation. I will say that long ago cork was high tech for the time compared to oil seals, wooden pegs, and such. However there must surely be a better way today. But this is a consumer issue, except for corked wines that show up early, so as usual it will be difficult to find anyone willing to pay for detailed research.

Salut/Hi Joe,

le/on Mon, 1 Mar 2004 19:04:42 -0500, tu disais/you said:-

Well first it's dissolved and combines with water

H20+SO2=H2(SO3), this dissociates to form H+ and (So3)- ions.

Then these combine with oxygen

That's easy!! The point at issue is that SO2 (sulphurous ions, actually) have a very powerful attraction for oxygen - much more so than most of the other components in wine. So if there IS any oxygen present in wine containing sulphites (sulphurous ions), it will rapidly be combined with the sulphites _before_ any other (slower) oxidation can take place. Actually this isn't _exactly_ what happens, because all these chemical reactions are a matter of equilibria rather than one way processes, but these equilibria are reached with differing speeds and with different priorities. The relatively energetyic oxidation of SO2 takes priority. And the SO3 formed is so stable that to all intents and purposed, it takes little part in any redox reactions.

Salut/Hi Tom S,

le/on Mon, 01 Mar 2004 22:53:17 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Not quite. There's a reasonable presumption that a bottle of good wine is filled very close to the cork. So if you look at a bottle of 20 year old wine, you will find that it's extremely rare to find one where the ullage (the space between top of wine and botton of cork - in this use of the word) doesn't exist.

Interesting. Cos I can't think of any, off hand. I'd not claim that they're down to top if shoulder or anything like that, but for me it's the norm for there to be a good couple of cms or so under the cork. Certainly, if you look at Christie's documentation and what they say about bottle fill levels, they make it quite clear that it is perfectly normal for wine levels to drop. I don't think that one can seriously dispute that _no one_ can match them for the number of old wines that they have seen (not necessarily tasted) over the decades of wine auctions in London (not to mention other sales venues).

I would say that some wine loss is normal, but that there may be a very few corks which for some reason haven't allowed a passage of liquid/air. I would hazard a guess that the only case where there would be none, may actually be less due to the corks themselves, but to environments where there was NO significant temperature variation. I've explained this is detail before, but it is obvious that the mechanism which drives the evacuation of wine and ingress of air is the steady 6 monthly variation in temperature in the cellar. If there's NO variation then there will be nothing to drive wine past/through/into the cork and therefore fill levels may not change. My point being that I'm less convinced than Michael that the process of aging and improvement of top wines is entirely independent of oxygen.

While I'm wholly on the side of screw caps use for 90% - maybe more - of wines, I'd be worried about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, if ALL wines were sealed under Stelvin. I'm not saying it IS so, but merely that it _might_ be so. The great problem of course is that until experiments are made by enough top wineries under varying conditions, we simply won't have enough data to work with. I DO accept that there's already a lot of evidence that shows that wines age under Stelvin, but from what I can see, this evidence is not so unequivocal over _how_ it ages. Is it the same? Better? Worse? In what way?

Thank you, interesting read.

There is another piece here:

In 1990, Loire winegrower Jean-Louis Saget decided to put some of his wines 10 meters under sea water. The first tasting was 1994. The key sentence:

| Une étonnante dégustation comparative des bouteilles témoins | restées en cave et des vins "de mer" révèle que ces derniers | sont restés beaucoup plus jeunes tout en développant une plus | grande complexité.

"An astonishing comparative tasting of the reference bottles from the cellar against the "sea bottles" showed that the latter kept their youth much better while getter more complex."

Would that be accepted as a proof of ageing without oxigen?

M.

A few years back a group of divers salvaged some champagne and rum (or cognac, I'm not quite sure) from a wreck of a schooner that had been sunk in the Gulf of Bothnia by a German U-Boat during WWI.

If memory serves me right, the champagne was still in good condition, if aged, and the auctioned bottles fetched high prices. The spirits, however, were spoiled.

Too bad I can't remember the name of the salvors or the wreck. There was quite a bit of interest in the wreck on both sides of the Gulf of Bothnia at the time so the Swedish contributors to this group might remember something.

Cheers,

-Topi Kuusinen, Finland

The ship was the Jonköping, torpedoed in 1916, the champagne was Heidsieck 1907 - and it has been mentioned in this thread. A google search should help immediately.

M.

There is a very interesing article in the Wine Spectator:

or

M.

I'm sure that's true if you're including shipwrecked wines, but I can assure you that both the cork producers and the manufacturers of "alternative closures" are spending a lot of time and $$/?? investigating this issue. My money is on the alternatives. BTW, have you seen the glass stoppered wines from Germany?

Tom S

I'd say it is.

No.

Yes.

No.

They retain freshness longer, but gain more in complexity.

M.

Michael,

That's the one, thanks. Or rather the "Jönköping" after the Swedish town.

I should read the whole thread more closely before replying .

BTW, as far as I know, that salvage started quite a few more hopefuls on their search in the archives here for similar cargoes.

Cheers,

-Topi Kuusinen, Finland

I have a bottle (Austrian sauvignon blanc 2003 from Sattlerhof) at home.

But I have a twofold reservation about the glass stopper. First, will the cap provide enough pressure over a long period of time to ensure tightness? Second, the PVDC layer is quite thin. This means that glas and stopper must be more or less perfectly round to give a tight fit. If one or the other has an oval eccentricity, then they might not prove tight. Anyhow, the screw cap technology is much more advanced and has proven fine for over three decades, so there is not the slightest doubt an which to chose - IF I was asked. I still can't understand why Bordeaux chateaux can't offer futures with a choice of closure (they could even command a small premium), just about the same way you have the choice of bottle size. After all, it's my decision to take the risk, and they could easily make everybody happy.

M.

Your English is much better than my Swedish! ;-)

M.

Did you find that in a book or do you simply remember that from your days of hanging around with Sir Thomas Newton?

S*it, All I can remember is H2O is Water and not to ever get in the Hindenburg.

Salut/Hi dick,

le/on Tue, 02 Mar 2004 14:00:31 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Ernie Rutherford, actually. I did chemistry for 10 years or so, and it is still a thing that fascinates me. One reason I became a chef. To paraphrase Heinlein "Think of it as chemistry in action"

In any case - not to put you down - redox (reductionoxidation) reactions are part of elementary chemistry, in my 2nd year at school iirc.

The Hindenburg was alright. It was the sparks that were the problem!! Chuckle.

Salut/Hi Michael Pronay,

le/on 2 Mar 2004 13:53:09 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Exactly. I share that reservation. Also, it's an expensive solution, involving special bottles with highly dimensionally accurate necks, AND special (dimensionally precise) stoppers. Anyone who has dealt with dround glass stoppers, will know just how precise one needs to be, and what a pig it is to ge them dead right. Given that screwtop bottles are special, asnd more expensive, at least the screwcaps are cheap and of proven technology.

Yes, I completely agree with you here.

If I were 20 years younger, and had the bucks, I'd set up a bottling line using Stelvin, and tour round the châteaux, offering my services, so that they could avoid the additional investment of having TWO different bottling lines. I am SURE whoever does so could make a _mint_ over the next few years. It is completely beyond my understanding why no one has thought of such a thing. As it is, at my age, I've no interest in setting up a new business.

Agreed.

You should meet Herve This.

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

In fact ...

... they do not look at all look like being very expensive and precision-made. But it might also be that the PVDC sealing film is thicker than with screw caps. But I am quite sure the chaps from Alcoa Germany conceiving the idea have thought anout the problem.

Indeed.

Ian, the truth is: The vast majority of the top châteaux (and the totality of the minor ones) do not even have bottling lines, they rely on highly experienced mobile bottlers! And, yes, these bottlers *do* already offer screw cap bottling! An example from a mobile bottler from Beziers:

I fear the idea is there already - but no one follows.

If they only did ...

M.