There has been a number of lively debates about the use of corks to close a bottle of wine. Personally, I like screw tops or Stelvin Enclosures. I also like Zorks. I do agree that there is a certain romance associated with pulling a cork from a bottle. But I like to think we are now in the twenty first century and progressed from corks.
There is nothing more depressing than opening a bottle of wine and having it be off. It seems that abut 90% of al bad wines are cork related. Bad seals, bacteria, or some other thing that affects the taste of the wine. With a screw top, that just does not happen. And if the wine is bad, then, blame the winemaker. And yes, there is enough air in a botle with a screw top to agae a wine. Remember, a cork is meant to keep the air out. A wet cork expands, making a seal.
That is why wen I read about the cork program at Silver Oak in Napa and Alexander Valley I was very impressed. For those who do not know, Silver Oak is one of the leading producers of cabernet Sauvignon in california.
They have a serious cork program. But what I did not know is that they have people who check and sniff corks to make sure that they are all okay. They do this to a large number of lots before they buy them to stick in the bottle. This is for all size corks. The sniffers are certified.
There is a method to test corks,by soaking them in white wine for 24 hours to see if they have any off odors. Bu t then the corks are ruined. They have helped pioneer a dry soak method which has corks set in a moist environment for 48 hours with a few drops of de-mineralized water. Then they are checked for odd odors . The testers can only sniff about 200 in a sitting, then “nose fatigue ” sets in.
The people at Silver OAk were concerned about their large format bottles. They have tested every cork and have started to recork every large format bottle. They check the bottles. They test them and top off a few with ones from the same vintage. Silver Oak says they have recorked over 2500 large format bottles.
Winemaker Christiane Schleussner was instrumental in putting this program together, resulting in a published paper in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry.
So now I feel better about opening my few large bottles of Silver Oak. But what is needed is a ground swell of other wineries adhering to a program like this to help eliminate you from not Uncorking Happiness.
