Peter May wrote:Michael Pronay wrote:
Diam is a bark produkt, but the treated bark granulate has given up practically all its bark qualities, negative (taints and aromas of all sort) and positive (elasticity).
I'm wondering what the point is of using cork element in the closure since it doesn't contribute anything. Why not use just the elastic polymer?
Because pure synthetics have proven to have far too high ox-trans rates. In other words: There are no pure sythetic corks that don't let the wine age prematurely.
Cork affects the wine it seals and contributes to the complex flavours of an aged wine.
Sorry, but that's simply not true. Cork does contribute flavors — sometime good, sometimes bad —, but never in a even near uniform way.
Some cork enthusiasts have told me that is one reason for their dislike of alternative screwcaps for long term aging because the wine wouldn't taste the same as if it had been closed with cork.
OK, let the cork dorks have bottle variation, taint and randox.
I am with Peter Gago, Penfold's chief winemaker, who has top reds under screwcaps for 11 and 12 years now. He told me: "The wines do age slightly different, like the wines in cool cellar compared to a normal cellar."
Everybody seems to love large format bottles because the wine remains fresher and more youthful. I have absolutely no idea why this virtue suddenly should turn into the most vile vice when screwcaps behave exactly the same.
I am with Michael Laroche (Revue du Vin de France, March 2005): "Last year I uncorked 40 bottles of a Chablis Grand Cru: 3 exceptional, 25 acceptable, 9 slightly, 3 heavily corked." This and an exceptionally well-showing Mercurey 1966, an experimental bottling of Université de Dijon, convinced him to go screwcaps.
I am with Hannes Gebeshuber, producer in Gumpoldskirchen, Austria, whose figures run remarkably well along Michel Laroche's lines: "We do extensive cork tastings. Overall, 10% are neutral or almost neutral; 10% are definively tainted, but with 80% we get a remarkably wide array of flavours one wouldn't call taint. And now try to chose the cork flavor type to the wine type — impossible."