Category: Wine Corks

Vol. 2 No. 27…Screw it! No more, put a cork in it!…and why!

TB is a hopeless romantic…the bottle of wine, a candlelit dinner, presenting the bottle, extracting the cork, hearing that little ‘pop’ as it comes out of the bottle…you get the picture.

My first experiences with screw caps on wine (sic) were Thunderbird, Ripple, Boone’s Farm, Red Mountain, all with those damnable accompanying hangovers…the morning after the night before. But then TB grew up! No more screw caps…not now, not ever!

Fast forward 50 (FIFTY) years and look what we have: wine in a box! Wine in can’s! …but screw cap’s? No freakin’ way!

Remember these are no ordinary screw caps. They are technologically engineered (aka new and improved), and mandated by the problem of cork taint which impacts as many as one in ten bottles. Some say they have never had a ‘corked’ bottle, others who are super-sensitive have had several…in any event the wine smells ‘skunky’. Once you smell it, you won’t forget it.

Also, recall that most wine is drunk within 30 days of purchase, but what happens if you are a collector or merely like to age your wines…not fun to spend $100 or more on a bottle of wine and have it smell funny (TB is told that on very old bottles there is ‘bottle stink’ – an ugly phrase – but that unless it is tainted fades with the recommended decanting).

What to do about it? Re-cork it and return it to your retailer for a refund or replacement – chances are the second bottle won’t have it but it could. Again, if you have stored it for years you won’t have this option because it could be due to improper storage or other factors.

Now imagine you as a winemaker. You have done everything right; you try to get the wine to the apogee of what you want it to taste like and then you bottle it, and with expensive corks. While producers try to make the corks as consistent as possible.

Stelvin produces two caps.I was told about them by Graham Painter, the Founder and CEO of NZ Wine Navigator which is an importer (exporter to the U.S.). He said that they allow for an oxygen exchange, something I had not heard before, thus allowing the caps to breathe.

I went to the best source I know, Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyards. Not only is Grahm one of the luminaries of California wine and the first volume producer to use screw caps, eventually to all of his wines, both white and red!

Grahm explained to me that the producer of the caps/capsules is Stelvin. They, in turn, produce two capsules: Saranex, which is more ‘oxygen exclusionary’ and suitable for wines to be consumed relatively soon, and Saratin, which is slightly less exclusionary than a standard cork but about the same as a premium cork, and thus requires slightly less Sulfur Dioxide (which some drinkers cannot tolerate, as with herbicides or insecticides). He adds that in the barrel, oxygen exchange is approximately 1ppm per month!

Back to the winemaker: he/she decides the optimal time to bottle the wine. Changes due to oxidation are not desirable, except over long periods of time. For this reason, vintage Ports are bottled young, after just 6 months to 1 year in barrel, and that is why they shouldn’t be consumed for twenty years or more, hence the English custom of buying a ‘pipe’ when a child is born assuring that they will have some of it for the rest of their lives – how big is a pipe? It is a barrel of 550 litres!!! FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY LITRES. We Americans should be so lucky.

So, will Stelvins replace corks? Given the fact that it takes years for a cork tree to regrow its bark, and the increased demand for corks, especially premium ones, winemakers are turning to synthetics and plastics. TB’s bet is it’s the screw cap that wins out. I have opened too many bottles where the cork has deteriorated and some that were obviously ‘corked’. A skilled sommelier can open one without it appearing to be a screw cap. Time will tell…but to me, it is what is inside that counts, right?

TB ©2016

Vol 2 No. 20…wine tidbits

Here are just a few things TB has observed since the last missive:

BPA’s – no longer a health hazard in wine due to the amount you would have to consume to have a negative health effect, this from the FDA. BUT TB advises those of you who drink from box wine encased in plastic to observe expiration dates, they are there for a reason, and if you see a lot of boxes with them, find another wine merchant as it shows their lack of inventory control and attention to wine products.

Corks – a lab has been able to isolate different phenol’s in corks. IF they can nail this down and why not? They did it with gene’s afterall. It would then be possible for a winemaker to isolate and use corks that would enhance the taste of their wine but also to make that taste more consistent in both the same and subsequent vintages.

Wine Theft – Having lived for nearly 30 years in the S.F. Bay Area, I have visited many of the wine shops around San Francisco, and weeded out the ones that did not meet my expectations. The main one I eliminated was Premier Cru in Oakland, but on the basis of snobbery prior to their arrest on multiple criminal charges that has not been adjudicated yet, but a lot of customer money was lost and will not likely be recovered – they better watch their backs though because one group they preyed on was Chinese wine buyers of Bordeaux futures and California wines for export to China…one never knows.

One I respected was Beltramo’s in Palo Alto, which sadly is going out of business after more than 50 years. Just before the last day theives broke in and stole $55,000 worth of wine in a case similar to last year’s French Laundry winery (not the same perps as they were caught and the wine recovered although the condition will only be known by tasting it). Foe their closing sale the owners had brought their library wines out and put them on display making the theft a ‘piece of cake’. Let’s hope they catch them and throw the proverbial book at them!

WTSO – in No. 19 I talked about www.winetillsoldout.com. I have now made two purchase from them. I wrote to customer service on both issues. The first was on the retail price shown first. I asked this because I was seeing prices well below that. It was explained that they use the one provided by the winery at time of release, but also list the ‘best’ online price, so you can compare. This satisfied me fully! The second was on a delivery problem that I won’t mention because they handled it ethically and I don’t want anyone to get the idea and try to get wine for free. I will only say it was a slipup that they stood up for and offered me a full refund or more of the same order. That was very responsible and I don’t know many online companies that would do the same. The point is: if you have a complaint write to them immediately. I was amazed at how fast they responded allowing us to resolve the problem to my, the customer’s satisfaction.

Meiomi Pinot Noir – originally, it was an extremely good value and available at Costco and other retailers who stocked it after tasting it and noting the quality. I wasn’t aware of this but it was owned by the Wagner family who makes Caymus, Conundrum, and other brands. This is from the Wine Spectator and is shocking but not surprising to me:

“Aiming to become an even bigger player in the California wine business, Joe Wagner has agreed to sell his Meiomi brand to Constellation Brands for $315 million. The 33-year-old Wagner told Shanken News Daily that he’s selling Meiomi—one of the U.S. wine market’s hottest brands—because the deal will give him the liquidity necessary to become a much larger landowner. Wagner says he hopes to amass 2,000-3,000 acres of California vineyards over the next five years.

“Constellation is paying a hefty price for Meiomi. Wagner told SND, a sister publication of Wine Spectator, that the deal price was roughly a 24 times multiple against the brand’s present and future earnings.

In striking the deal, Constellation adds a brand whose recent performance has been nothing short of astonishing. Wagner developed Meiomi in 2006 while he was a winemaker at Caymus, which is headed by his father, Chuck, and the wine was released in 2009. In 2010, the brand sold 90,000 cases. Last year, the California wine brand won Impact “Hot Brand” honors after advancing by 41 percent to 550,000 cases and was named Wine Brand Of The Year by Impact sister publication Market Watch magazine. Wagner told SND that Meiomi, which retails for around $25 a 750-ml., is on pace to sell more than 700,000 cases in 2015.

In other words, it went from a limited production wine to a mega under Constellation which nobody even heard of (unless you were a wino who drank Wild Irish Rose), and only gained ‘credibility’ by buying the Mondavi brand then going on a shopping spree which has made them one of the top three wine companies in the world. Wagner noted that “no vineyards were included in the sale.” It’s cheaper now…and now YOU, the consumer know why. What next? Boost production to 1 million cases to compete with Fred Franzia’s ‘Two Buck Chuck’? For those not aware his company is Bronco Wines, which owns 40,000 acres of vineyards in California, and bottles as Charles Shaw (an interesting story in itself), and is sold almost (?) exclusively through Trader Joe’s. For the record, Franzia is a convicted felon for using inferior grapes and bottling them as varietals. He didn’t go to jail but instead paid a several million dollar fine (the prosecutor said not sending him to prison like the others involved was the biggest mistake of his career…why didn’t he? Franzia convinced him that the town where it is located, Ceres, Ca., would suffer economic disaster without him). Oh, and about those 40k acres: the longest rows of any winery. Why? So the ‘tractor’, not hand pickers, doesn’t have to waste time turning around, but note you get unripe grapes, stems, and an occasional poor rodent in the mix, but hey at $2.99 or so, who cares? Not the people, mostly seniors, that drink it. There have been efforts made to elect him to the California Winemakers Hall of Fame, which will lose all credibility if it does and shame those who deserve it. Franzia is not a winemaker, but he isa a marketing genius whose only  claim to fame is getting rich…but isn’t that what Constellation Brands as done off Mondavi’s reputation? Wonder what’s in the Woodbridge these days?

Last week I attended a telecast with the Wagner Family at Total Wines, discussing their brands followed by a tasting of their full line, sans Meiomi obviously and all were great.

Sorry for the rant, but TB is about people with passion who make REAL contributions to the wine industry and are not in it merely to enrich themselves or use their fortunes to bid up Napa Valley land (and other places..including Bordeaux), to make small lots of wine with a flying winemaker, get a 90 point rating and sell it at absurd prices due to the small volume. That is wine snobbery at its worst. Not saying these wines aren’t good, just ridiculously priced!

If you are still with TB…thanks for reading…I know I feel better now!

TB

Vol. 2 No. 18…getting ‘closure’

One of the blogs I subscribe to is The Wine Economist by Mike Veseth. In his latest, he did a great piece on cork this week. It got me to thinking on several counts.

While the situation is improving cork taint continues to affect wine. What if one out 12 bottles is infected with it (probably less than that but who knows)? That bottle may come back to the retailer and then up the chain to the producer, and it might have been perfectly good.  Like the way diners send back their dinners as not tasting right to get a free meal, usually after they have eaten a substantial amount of it.

On my recent trip to Spain and Portugal (yes, Portugal, cork capital of the world), more than one winemaker told me they would like to see corks go away. Why?

Let’s consider this: do you know the difference between a Vintage Port and a Late Bottled Vintage Port? If you said the Vintage Port is aged longer you would be wrong. It is only in barrel for 1-2 years. Where a good Tawny or Late Bottled Vintage, or Colheita (single vintage), will be aged for 10,20, 40, 50 years (I tasted a Graham’s 1972 Single Harvest Port at the winery and it was truly special), the Vintage Port is naturally aged in the bottle. Also, it more or less has to be drunk within 48 hours, whereas a Tawny or LBV could last up to two weeks.

What is the point? The point is other than the affectation, it could just as well have a screw cap known as a Stelvin closure. The Aussie’s and Kiwi’s used it first, but it took Randall Graham at Bonny Doon to dare to use them in the United States. It is now becoming acceptable to use the Stelvin for white wine but if its a red and you aren’t going to lay it down for five or ten years you want cork. But seriously, is there a difference?

Consider that capsule that encases the cork. Just how much air transfer to you think is going on? My guess is ZERO. However, over time the cork can shrink, get dry, and let air in. Why take the risk IF you know that the wine is released late.

Two examples: Chateau Belle-Vue, a Bordeaux style red from Lebanon. It is a beautiful wine. Guess what the current release is? 2007! In Portugal I bought a bottle of Douro table wine at Quinto do Infantado. Vintage, 2010! Then, in Priorat, Spain, three bottles of Clos de l’Obac, different varietals 2005 -2007. In Ibiza I bought a bottle of a local wine I liked with a 2002 vintage.

Get the picture? These wines don’t need aging, they can be drunk for any special occasion. So who needs a cork? Only someone who needs to show off their somme skills with a waiter’s corkscrew. One last point: how many of you have actually had an old vintage wine? You only have a few minutes to enjoy it and then it might taste like tea. Ah but the romance. You know the answer of what to do when the somme hands you the cork to sniff after he has, right? Throw it across the room!