The Romance of the Cork, Chapter 400,513...

Sitting in the middle of a thunder and lightning extravaganza in the high mountain tropics of Central Costa Rica, enjoying a tempestuous show, Nature's son et lumiere at its grandest and most terrifying...

We huddled under the broad eaves of the Hotel Buena Vista, perched on a high ridge overlooking the stretch of valley and capitol city of San Jose below us. We could only now and then catch a glimpse, a peek, a wink between the scudding clouds among and below us as the storm whipped through. Squalls of rain, the strobe flash and almost instant corrugated thutter of close thunder that follows, painful immediate brightness searing the eyes, followed by intense, immediate black.

But we're okay, huddled up in our sturdy hotel room, snug and sound. You might say it's a stark and dormy night. (sorry)

Gail has lovingly cared for her last bottle of treasured Hiedsieck Monopole Diamant Bleu 1989, and lugged it down in her luggage, swaddled securely against the vicissitudes of the airplane hold. And now, at the apex of this magnificent storm, we shall savor it.

Unfortunately, when we open it, there is no pop and there will be no fizz. The cork is as straight and true and shriveled as can be. No testa a funghi here. And the wine is dull, oxidized, supernally flat and flaccid.

Oh, the romance of the cork...

While I am still holding on to the notion that there are enough non oxidized wines out there well stopped by a bark of wood, I have to confess that I have yet to encounter a "corked" wine under a screw cap. But could Champagne be contained by anything other than a cork? I know that Etoile by Chandon uses a bottlecap. Does anyone else?

Almost everyone else uses a crown cap (what civilians think of as a coke cap or beer cap, Shaji.

Virtually every methode champenoise you see in the market is closed with a crown cap....right up until the final disgorgement/dosage. Then it is fitted with a cork and sent to the consumer!

So the supreme irony of a champagne ruined by cork is that virtually the very last stage of a laborious process of creating the wine is the insertion of the very element that has the best chance of ruining it.

Now that you mention it, I remember seeing neat row upon row of slanted champagne bottles at Gloria Ferrer in those wooden thingies (the technical word eludes me right now) where they are riddled every so often. And indeed they had bottle caps. When I saw Etoile stopped with a bottle cap, I thought it was a marketing gimmick and I did not think of the practical side of it. Why aren't more sparklers not adopting this? Is Chandon the only winery doing this?

Some Prosecci are bottled with crown cap. il Mionetto, maybe, in the US?

Lots of 187ml bottles are in crown cap, but that's basically because they are usually opened by bartenders, and the crown is quicker to open.

In Europe you see many more sparklers in crown cap closures.

Here the marketers are a little more leery. My favorite is when you open a bottle of exceptionally cheap carbonated wine (I won't mention a brand name) and find a plastic closure that is constructed to look somewhat like a cork. :^)

So the supreme irony of a champagne ruined by cork is that virtually the very last stage of a laborious process of creating the wine is the insertion of the very element that has the best chance of ruining it.

And let's not forget that that same element contributes to more injuries than any other aspect of a Champagne bottle. How many eyes have been lost to flying corks?

Mark Lipton

[David M. Bueker]

I feel your pain.

http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/vil ... hp?t=12330

JFTMOR: Champagne — I am talking about champagne from an area called Champagne Viticole in France — by law has to be released with corks for any bottle size from half bottle upwards. Airline and minibar miniatures usually carry a screw cap.

There is possibly one way to get both taint-freeness and compliance with the rules: Oenéo-Sabaté's sparkling version of the DIAM cork called "Mytik Diamant".