cork preparation

Lou:

No bouncing required, you covered just about everything.

I rinse (NOT SOAK) the corks in sanitizer prior to use. Store unused corks in a ziploc bag ( I prefer the thicker freezer ones).

Unless you buy a sealed bag of 1000 with SO2 inside (you should smell it) you don't know for sure how the corks have been handled/stored.

Steve

Agreed. This really has been covered. A lot. Wine is pretty impervious to infection or Europe would have died out 1000 years ago. I rinse natural corks, I spritz all corks with SO2 and let them drain in a funnel. I buy corks in 1000's and use them over 3 or 4 years at times, never had an issue other than with corks that were just plain bad. I keep them in the bag rolled up tight and use a rubber band to keep it closed.

If you squeeze it in your fingers and it doesn't give at all something is wrong if it's a natural cork. It's either too dry or made from inferior bark.

Joe

Ditto. I rinse in a dilute pot. meta solution.

A different question, that has always worried me;

when we homewinemakers (meaning - winemakers who produce relatively small quantity) purchase corks, we are at risk of a 'batch' of TCA contaminated corks. Anecdote; a fellow home vineyardist / winemaker had an entire vintage tainted when the 1,000 cork bag he purchased tunred out to be tainted.

So - how do wee guard against that? I have been buying ny corks in smaller quantities, from a couple different sources at different times. Too paranoid? Other measures to guard against the loss of a lot of wine?

Wine is a hostile environment for microbes. "Wine" microbes need a special metabolism because of the high acid and alcohol content of wine. Very few microbes capable of surviving on a cork can survive in wine. I use corks right out of the open bag unless the corks are too hard to drive with a floor corker. If the corks are too hard, I put an open bottle of water containing sulfite and citric acid in the bucket and then I pour the hard corks around the bottle. I seal the bucket tightly and let the corks hydrate for a few weeks. Damp corks make a mess at bottling time. Wineries drive dry corks. Lum Del Mar, California, USA

Ric, I started using NomaCorc to get around that. I had about 200 TCA tainted corks in 2002; it's infuriating. In hindsight I should have known better than to use those corks, they felt funny, very stiff. I actually quit using them and took the bag back for credit. When I cut a few apart, the light color was only about 3/8 inch deep. The center was very woody, porous and dark. The corks were awful. Good corks never look like that, if you cut them apart they look about the same inside as out and give a little when you squeeze them.

I started using NomaCorc in 2003 in a bigger way, so far so good. They say the closure is good for 3 years. Most of my wines are gone in 3 years. I'll leave a few for 5 to 10 years to see how they do.

Joe

Another way to avoid this is buy good corks . I used to skimp on them . Then I started thinking .... Here I have put all this work into making the wine . Now I am worried about the difference between .35 verses .65 cents on a cork . Buy the best cork you can and never have to worry . Greg

I use fresh corks as they come out of the bag. If I am going to have to store them for a while, which means the may dry out, I store them in a sealed primary bucket with an open bottle of NaMet solutions to maintain sanitation and to keep the humidity up.

Ray

I learned my lesson there; these were around $125/1000 and were awful. I think the most we ever paid for good corks in quantities of 500 to

1000 was around $300/1000; usually half that. Synthetics are around $0.15 to $0.20 in quantities of 1000.

I wouldn't say an expensive cork is immune to TCA though; NomaCorc has already sold over a billion synthetics and they are only one supplier. There are lots of horror stories of wineries with TCA issues.

Joe

The synthetic approach is the only way to go to completely avoid TCA - price of cork doesn't appear to have any impact on likelihood of TCA contamination, according to the commercial industry statistics. Thus far I haven't tred the synthetics - Joe, do you use a standard table top / floor standing cork press? any problems?

I use the Portuguese Floor corker. It works well.

I have heard of issues with the Ferrari brass jaws creating a slit in the side of synthetics. Mine did that too. I noticed the iris would shrink the cork to a point and then one jaw would separate a little at the bottom of the stroke. I took it apart and reworked it and now it's fine. (I would not suggest taking one apart, the springs are pretty tough and it can fly apart like nobodies business.) It did bugger up SupremeCorqs, I fixed it before I bought the Nomacorcs.

I quit using Supremecorq because the SO2 did drop in a year and a half, white were oxidizing faster than I saw using real corks.

The Portuguese has plastic jaws and just doesn't do this, it's a nice corker for the money.

Joe

I've used corks that have been dry for a decade or so with no problem.

Soak them in warm water for awhile (an hour or so), drain, soak again and repeat until the water isn't brown. Drain and let them sit in a collander while you're getting ready to bottle. When you're ready to use them they should still be moist, but not gooshy. If they drip water when you compress them in the corker they're too wet.

I may have had one bad bottle out of many thousands using this method. BTW, there's no need to use sulfite to treat the corks because the wine already has sufficient free SO2 - or at least it _should_.

Tom S

Tom, Have you ever seen the process used to mushroom a sparkling wine cork? I'm thinking one of the issues I have had with them is thatI make so few bottles the corks sit around too long and are just too dry. They never fully re-expand. I'll try hydrating them like you say. I'm wondering if there is another step where once the cork is partially inserted they give it a 'tamp' to mushroom it before applying the wire hood.

Joe

I really don't have any idea. The corks they use for champagne are very different from those for still wines so a comparison isn't valid.

Tom S