Cork or cap?

My understanding is that properly appled twist caps are better than corks. That is why many commercial wineries are switching to twist caps. However, home winemakers do not have the ability to apply caps properly. Reusing old caps MAY give a good seal the first couple of times, but not forever. The new caps that are available will only fit specific bottles, eg Arbor Mist bottles. Also, I have seen some discussion that these new caps are not as good as the type used by wineries. I don't personally know about that.

BTW, the above is about twist caps and wine bottles. Crown caps and beer bottles is another matter.

Stvee

It's all relative the way I see it. Wineries use a machine applied aluminum cap and it's supposed to provide a good seal. I hear New Zealand is using more of these than corks now. The big name in that is Stelvin if you want to Google it.

Screw caps from home winemaking suppliers are not the same although some make a great seal and can be reused.

It depends on how long you want to keep it. Since this is Concord it will be _very_ fruity so it's not a wine you would normally age for years and years. I would think screw caps would be fine there.

If it were a really nice Cab or Chardonnay that I though had to rest 5-

Most of what I make would be considered good table wine, it's not cheap box wine but it's far from a First Growth too. I use Nomacorc and some agglomerated for the most part. Nomacorc says their cork is good for 3 years.

Most of my red wine is drunk between 2 and 5 years; the white and rose at 1 to 3 years.

I had a really bad year in 2002 due to junk natural corks. I should have known better than to use them. They felt too hard and it turned out they caused a lot of cork taint. I used about 300 and took the other 700 back and got credit for them. I just thought they were terrible corks, I did not suspect taint. They were the filled pore type. Once a wine it tainted it is useless. It's not even good for vinegar, (unless you want to use it to kill weeds growing in cracks in your driveway).

Joe

It's all relative the way I see it. Wineries use a machine applied aluminum cap and it's supposed to provide a good seal. I hear New Zealand is using more of these than corks now. The big name in that is Stelvin if you want to Google it.

Screw caps from home winemaking suppliers are not the same although some make a great seal and can be reused.

It depends on how long you want to keep it. Since this is Concord it will be _very_ fruity so it's not a wine you would normally age for years and years. I would think screw caps would be fine there.

If it were a really nice Cab or Chardonnay that I though had to rest 5-

Most of what I make would be considered good table wine, it's not cheap box wine but it's far from a First Growth too. I use Nomacorc and some agglomerated for the most part. Nomacorc says their cork is good for 3 years.

Most of my red wine is drunk between 2 and 5 years; the white and rose at 1 to 3 years.

I had a really bad year in 2002 due to junk natural corks. I should have known better than to use them. They felt too hard and it turned out they caused a lot of cork taint. I used about 300 and took the other 700 back and got credit for them. I just thought they were terrible corks, I did not suspect taint. They were the filled pore type. Once a wine it tainted it is useless. It's not even good for vinegar, (unless you want to use it to kill weeds growing in cracks in your driveway).

Joe

The oak trees that provided the world with the finest cork are getting very old. As a result the quality of their bark used to make cork is not was it use to be. Some of those oak trees have been harvested for hundred of years. The commercial wineries are well award of this and they are gradually switching to aluminums screw caps to save guard the quality and reputation of their wines. Still some die hard people will not buy expensive wine with an aluminium screw cap. I am gradually switching to aluminium screw caps and seals. Over here I can only get the used 1 litre bottle with their original cap. The supply store are not yet carrying aluminums screw caps yet.

Because of the way that the screw caps are applied, I doubt that you will see them.

Steve

You have a good point.

Aluminium screw caps can be formed and made on the bottle after it has been filled. Or utilizing the same tooling approach used to make incandescent light screw base but in reverse you can make tons of caps. China may already have the tooling, outsourcing caps is not a problem. Conversely, some Canadian and US companies already making plastic caps for the food industries are already testing and working with major wineries to produce an acceptable cap.

If you are ageing a wine for 18 months or less, it is probably better to bottle under screwcap as it protects the wine from oxidizing as quickly, plus there is no risk of cork taint.

For long-term ageing, the jury is still out on scewcaps (they simply haven't been used on age-worthy wines for long enough). If you have a big red you intend to age for years, you might want to bottle a few under screwcap and the rest under natural cork and test them every year side-by-side to see how they develop differently.

Most of the studies I've read indicate that the screwcaps preserve the wine much better, but can give off flavours after a period of time. And of course, if you are ageing a wine into maturity/austerity, preserving it isn't exactly the goal.