WTN: Following a wine under screwcap over a few years

This evening I opened a bottle of 2003 Mount Langi Ghiran Riesling (Victoria, Aus). I've had a couple of bottles of this in the last few years, and it's been fascinating to see it slowly evolve - not least because all bottles (from the same retail source/batch in Singapore) were sealed under screwcap.

Back in late 2005 (when I was just really getting into wine/starting to record tasting notes for the first time), I didn't enjoy this much - all I found was just a lot of acidity with bone dry citrus flavours.

A second bottle breached in mid-2007 was much more pleasant, starting to show some signs of development. There was more complexity to that bottle with some smoky/kerosene-like flavours and a flinty mineral character starting to emerge, and the acid had started to integrate nicely - while dry, it no longer felt shrill and austere, with a rounder mouthfeel and more depth to the flavours.

The bottle tonight was the best Riesling I've had from this producer so far. Light gold in colour with a really lovely complex nose showing lemon, grapefruit, smoke, flowers and faintly toasty notes with a whiff of petrol underneath. Dry and medium bodied in the mouth with flavours of citrus fruits, flint, toasted almonds and good acidity. Finishes clean with a twist of faintly herbal flavours at the end. Delicious with plenty of depth and complexity, drinking really well now and I look forward to seeing if this'll keep developing over the next few years.

[David M. Bueker]

Sounds like a promising journey so far.

I've seen complaints about reduction in some screw capped wines, but I haven't yet run across any real issues with development in people's notes across the web.

Well, not to burst your bubble, David, but I have come across reduction in wines under screwcap.

I wouldn't worry overmuch about that though...without fail (that I know of or have experienced) reduction has been an issue only with winemakers new to screwcaps, those who have made the wine as they normally would have under cork, without taking into account that a lighter touch was needed. In every case I've known, the problem was solved by the second vintage bottling under screwcap.

Sometimes the problem was actually reduction---no oxygen exchange under screwcap. More often though, initially, the problem was compounded by winemakers still putting too much sulphur in their wines. An easy remedy was lightening up on sulphur use. A remedy for actual reduction could be either copper-fining (changing the molecules, essentially) or adding a bit of oxygen by 'folding in' a little prior to bottling.

Imagine though: if Manfred Prum came to feel he didn't need to douse his wines with sulphur to preserve them from the ravages of cork ageing? And what came out of the bottle was only the aromas and bouquet of Riesling??? Dream big, my brother; dream big.

For information, even the great Château Margaux is doing experiments with screw caps!

As for myself, I think they're fine for inexpensive wines to drink young, but I would never want one for a fine wine, particularly one to age.

However, I'm willing to look at this objectively - by tasting samples side by side.

Best regards,
Alex R.

As I write this, the time in Tel Aviv is 20:22. It is only the 4th of January and considering that one of my New Year's resolutions was not to enter into further discussions about screwcaps vs corks, all I will do is grimace silently* at the thought of my JJ Prum or Chateau Margaux under anything other than cork.

Best
Rogov

*Does grimacing silently violate my resolution?

[David M. Bueker]

Well, not to burst your bubble, David, but I have come across reduction in wines under screwcap.

Umm...Hoke - I was (apparently not well) acknowledging reduction issues, but saying that I haven't heard any meaningful reports of wines developing (i.e. maturing) in an any other odd/unpleasant way.

Well, not to burst your bubble, David, but I have come across reduction in wines under screwcap.

Umm...Hoke - I was (apparently not well) acknowledging reduction issues, but saying that I haven't heard any meaningful reports of wines developing (i.e. maturing) in an any other odd/unpleasant way.

Not the first time I've misunderstood someone, David.

*Does grimacing silently violate my resolution?

Possibly, but writing in a different colour may help In fact one can say many things which no-one will realise you've said

The screw-cap pioneer in Germany is Fritz Hasselbach from Weingut Gunderloch. When I first spoke to him — back in 2003 at Vinexpo (OMG, already six years from now!) — he said that in the beginning he made the error of bottling under screw-cap exactly the same time as he would under cork. The results did not please him: "Under cork, the wine kind of needed six to eight weeks to get accustomed with his new environment. Under screw-cap, the bottle shock was there, but the wine needed much longer — months — to recover." The solution he found out works absolutely perfect: "Every wine goes into large oak casks between six weeks and three months prior to bottling. Then the wine is absoluteyl à point and perfect after bottling ."

Could it be that this is what is meant by those "reduction problems" that I simply do not get at all? (I have to add that I taste some 2,000 screw-capped wines per year, and I only had once a serious issue.)

The screw-cap pioneer in Germany is Fritz Hasselbach from Weingut Gunderloch. When I first spoke to him — back in 2003 at Vinexpo (OMG, already six years from now!) — he said that in the beginning he made the error of bottling under screw-cap exactly the same time as he would under cork. The results did not please him: "Under cork, the wine kind of needed six to eight weeks to get accustomed with his new environment. Under screw-cap, the bottle shock was there, but the wine needed much longer — months — to recover." The solution he found out works absolutely perfect: "Every wine goes into large oak casks between six weeks and three months prior to bottling. Then the wine is absoluteyl à point and perfect after bottling ."

Could it be that this is what is meant by those "reduction problems" that I simply do not get at all? (I have to add that I taste some 2,000 screw-capped wines per year, and I only had once a serious issue.)

Michael, I think that is very much what people talk about, and very much the process that winemakers go through when they are adjusting to a new situation with screwcaps.

Hasselbach figured out the staging of the wine in oak casks. I know other winemakers who have simply left their wines in stainless steel for a short period. In Australia, I know winemakers who do the micro-ox treatment a bit, with the idea of 'folding in' a small amount of oxygen prior to bottling. And most of them (I hear) have had to rethink how they use sulphur at every stage.

It is common knowledge, and common practice, for many of the major houses in Burgundy to ramp up sulphur dosing of their wines for export, so they will be able to survive the uncertain and varying shipping/storage problems. Thus far, however, I haven't really heard all that much about the effect of those problems on screwcapped wines. I don't know if that's because the screwcap means the sulphur is not as necessary for stablization, or if the cork makes it necessary, or what. One of those things that needs to be researched extensively, I think.

No doubt when producers shifted from the trusty and reliable olive oil on top of the amphora to the newfangled cork technology, adjustments had to be made as well. And no doubt there were die hard naysayers and recidivists who were stoutly resisting these damned new inventions. (Wait, wait...is that Rogov I see standing in the wood carving with the floppy hat and the variegated hose and codpiece, saying something about romance and hallowed tradition??? )

(Wait, wait...is that Rogov I see standing in the wood carving with the floppy hat and the variegated hose and codpiece, saying something about romance and hallowed tradition??? )

I taught I taw a puddy-tat
a'sneaking after me
I did! I did! A puddy-tat
is sneaking after me!

All of which leads to several points, one question and one plea:

The points

(a) Even paranoids have real enemies
(b) I would no sooner wear a codpiece than I would jump out an airplane without a parachute
(c) Although most of my stockings are over the calf length, nearly all are black or dark blue and not a one is variegated
(d) I am most definitely into romance but, at least in this case, not some hallowed tradition
(e) Keeping in mind my New Year's resolution, I am not going to get into the issue at hand

The question

How do you feel about wine that comes in tins?

The plea

And forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum*

Very best and indeed, smiling broadly
Rogov


*Old English, but I'm sure you'll decode it.

Oh, good catch!

The question

How do you feel about wine that comes in tins?

Not much. Suspect that's because the wine I have tried that has been placed in tins is, without exception, poor wine. Suspect I would not have been impressed with same wine in the most tradtiional of bottles and under cork.

I do remember when beer (or what passes for it in this country) transitioned from from bottles to cans. Transitions were accompanied by the death knells of beer as we knew it sounded by the traditionalists who could imagine good beer coming from bottles and bottles only, declaring they would never drink beer from a can. (Then there was the rather vocal and strongly opinionated subset of beer drinkers who declared unequivocally that the death of beer had already occured when the change had been made from long-necked bottles to short, squatty bottles, so it didn't matter anymore anyway.) [I maintain that if it's not coming from a good tap system, it's not good beer. I also date the death of good beer as we know it from the day that producers figured a sloooooow tap of Guiness was no longer desirable and speeded up the process.]

Points I might make:

--I would not consider wine in a tin equivalent to wine placed under a screwcap. False analogy. You are confusing closure with container, and suggesting that the screwcap is equivalent to putting wine in a tin can. It isn't; it isn't the same thing at all.

--I understand your point about container/package conveying a sense of value for the contents. That is simply a value that you have learned to place upon it however. (I am not without sympathy for that view, mind you. It's just that I place more value on the wine itself, whereas you seem to require the existence of the cork, for some reason (that being the fact that you grew up associating cork with wine, whether it made sense or not, and not for any practical reason)

--I understand that, for you, the entirety of the experience of tasting a wine is valuable, and that entirety is in part the appeal of the container, and in part the ceremony it involves. I also understand that you resist change once something is established, and place greater value on what has been than on what could be. Or another way of saying it could be the known(experienced and predictable, even if potentially flawed) as being safer than the unknown Inot experienced and therefore unpredictable).

You, in return, need to understand the absolute glee I enjoy when I successfully draw you out of your self-imposed silence on these issues. It's like the medieval bear-baiting, without the blood.

Congrats on surviving another year with your sense of style intact, Daniel.

*Old English, but I'm sure you'll decode it.

"And forgive us our guilts as we forgive our guilty," if I understood that urum is indeed the dative plural neuter. Is that really how it goes in the original, though?

-O

I can't tell you how many times that dative plural neuter thing has gotten me into trouble!

You, in return, need to understand the absolute glee I enjoy when I successfully draw you out of your self-imposed silence on these issues. It's like the medieval bear-baiting, without the blood.

Hoke,

Being baited by you is always a pleasure.

As to bear-baiting, alas an activity still carried on in parts of Pakistan. A "cultural thing" I know and who are we to judge the cultures of others, but (referring to my earlier comment) I would gain a certain amount of perverse pleasure in seeing those who organize such events tossed out of airplanes without parachutes. Being a kind and gentle man, I would make sure they were thrown from a minimum of 15,000 feet so they would have time to enjoy the panoramic view on the way down.

Best
Rogov

As I write this, the time in Tel Aviv is 20:22. It is only the 4th of January and considering that one of my New Year's resolutions was not to enter into further discussions about screwcaps vs corks, all I will do is grimace silently* at the thought of my JJ Prum or Chateau Margaux under anything other than cork.

Best
Rogov

*Does grimacing silently violate my resolution?

Rogov, I will join your pledge. I also promised not to complain anymore about over-population. The perps, screwers and screwees, can enjoy their fruits together in perpetuity, while I am resting.

Speaking of corks, rather than comparisons, I have seen it written and heard it said that it takes a pretentious person to sniff a cork, since it doesn't mean anything to do so. My wife and I have been approving wine bottles with nothing other than their corks now for some time, now. From my experience, it is most reliable; although I will not be astonished if a bottle in the future passes the cork test but turns out to have a flaw. More than just a flaw test, though, a beautiful cork smell, which many of them have (from Bordeaux, anyway), provides the most wonderful anticipation between passing the cork back and forth with a loved one and then pouring the first taste.

Over the weekend, Lynn and I enjoyed a simple 1999 Lagrange and then a lowly 2000 Haut Bages-Averous. Both corks were spectacular, greatly enhancing the wine drinking experience for us. One of the great joys of growing older is the pleasure one can find in being stupid about such things. Younger people do not have that luxury, so it is no wonder that they wouldn't feel that they were missing something.

They would say instead that they certainly don't miss corked wine. Turns out that my little corks turned up three such corkers over the last few weeks, one 1995 Bordeaux, even. Didn't have to taste the liquid, but I did anyway just for science. As I get older, I am aware of missing muscle mass; cartilage; brain neurons; the fun of driving 150 mph, drunk; hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, peed away; the pleasure of young girls (although I still like and appreciate my wife more than any of them); thousands of lost days, forever, etc.; so a lost bottle here and there due to TCA is really not a big deal, compared with the ultimate pleasure of occasionally enjoying a bottle that is complete - like the two I just mentioned.

Best,

Covert

[David M. Bueker]

Poppycock. A cork is a closure. Nothing more, nothing less.

Poppycock. A cork is a closure. Nothing more, nothing less.

And wine is just a liquid?

[David M. Bueker]

Poppycock. A cork is a closure. Nothing more, nothing less.

And wine is just a liquid?

Eventually yes. We do go on a bit about don't we.

But the romance of wine is what is in the bottle, not what closes the bottle. Grapes undergo a change to turn into wine, while a piece of cork is just stuffed into the top of the bottle. The piece of cork is too often faulty, and ruins what should have been a good (or better) experience.

I probably resent Covert's characterization of people younger than him as not understanding what we are missing by looking away form corks. That's really not much different from saying we don't know what we're missing by using these newwfangled cars over the beloved horse and buggy.

Over the weekend, Lynn and I enjoyed a simple 1999 Lagrange and then a lowly 2000 Haut Bages-Averous. Both corks were spectacular, greatly enhancing the wine drinking experience for us. One of the great joys of growing older is the pleasure one can find in being stupid about such things. Younger people do not have that luxury, so it is no wonder that they wouldn't feel that they were missing something.

Unfortunately, the type of closure on the bottle doesn't enhance my experience with a wine at all. My enjoyment comes from the content of the bottle, what it's served with and who I enjoy it with, not what it's sealed with. Hence why I have a strong preference for screwcaps - I've had one horribly reductive wine that may have been a result of the winemaking more than the closure, but otherwise haven't had anywhere near the failures or frustration that I've had with corks, where I've had too many wines that were oxidised because of loose or low quality corks, or undrinkable because of TCA.

so a lost bottle here and there due to TCA is really not a big deal, compared with the ultimate pleasure of occasionally enjoying a bottle that is complete - like the two I just mentioned.

What I don't understand is how having a cork makes the bottle "complete". At the end of it we're drinking the wine, not the closure. If the wine is enjoyable and drinking as it should be without flaws - in this case a lovely dry Riesling showing some really fascinating nuances with some bottle age - I don't see how a glass stopper, Stelvin lining or cork makes it more or less complete.

Perhaps a wee-bit off-topic but:

(a) Think of the enormous potential pleasures, on a warm spring day, of exploring the back roads, vineyards and wineries of Alsace or Tuscany with one's horse and buggy.

(b) Consider the adventure of cruising the Mediterranean or even crossing the Atlantic Ocean in most leisurely manner aboard a luxuruiously fitted four masted schooner

(c) Ponder on a quiet and meditative stroll in the woods before the days of the cellular phone

(d) Focus on the delicious aromas of a book first opened, that book of course, printed on paper

(e) Reflect on the superbly simple joy of starting one's day with a small glass of marc, two espresso coffees and croissants that were formed by hand

(f) Think for a moment of the matire d'hotel who bowed slightly on recognizing you, not as a sign of servility but as one of respect

I am indeed not opposed to huge jet airplanes, well-designed automobiles, and gentleman's grappa, but let us not lose sight of the reality that not all that was old was bad.


Best
Rogov




P.S. And do please note, not a word above in re closures.

Hand-formed croissants, a good book, a quiet stroll and all those other things sound wonderful, Daniel (especially the bit without cellular phones, something I find too intrusive and irritating). But none of those have a ~5% failure rate.
My issue with cork isn't that it's old. Glass stoppers have been used since the Middle Ages as seals and I have no problem with them. My concern stems from the fact that I've had a number of potentially great wine experiences ruined by bad corks. In contrast, I've had only one issue with a bad wine under screwcap, and I open a good number of those, both young and with some age on them. I've found that the wines I've had under screwcap closures for the most part age just fine, and I'm yet to unscrew a bottle and find it to be prematurely oxidised or TCA tainted. I'll take that over a closure with a high failure rate in both those areas.

[David M. Bueker]

I don't think that all that is old is bad.

One of my enduring passions is hiking in the mountains. I can't deny that one of the little pleasures I get is because my cell phone rarely functions in those environments. Sure it would be handy in an emergency, but I would rather take the risk of being cut off from civilization.

Consider the possibility that getting rid of the cork is like eliminating scurvy (or the occasional shipwreck) in long sea voyages.

Ultimately I think we still have the image problem that screw-type tops have been used for more "pedestrian" beverages (or other fluids...motor oil anyone) prior to their use for wine. People seem unwilling to separate the closure from its prior history.

As for the cork, if it could be made significantly more reliable I would not be so passionate against it. So far (even with producers who claim to be using the bets corks available) I have not seen the improvement.

This evening I opened a bottle of 2003 Mount Langi Ghiran Riesling (Victoria, Aus). I've had a couple of bottles of this in the last few years, and it's been fascinating to see it slowly evolve - not least because all bottles (from the same retail source/batch in Singapore) were sealed under screwcap.

Back in late 2005 (when I was just really getting into wine/starting to record tasting notes for the first time), I didn't enjoy this much - all I found was just a lot of acidity with bone dry citrus flavours.

A second bottle breached in mid-2007 was much more pleasant, starting to show some signs of development. There was more complexity to that bottle with some smoky/kerosene-like flavours and a flinty mineral character starting to emerge, and the acid had started to integrate nicely - while dry, it no longer felt shrill and austere, with a rounder mouthfeel and more depth to the flavours.

The bottle tonight was the best Riesling I've had from this producer so far. Light gold in colour with a really lovely complex nose showing lemon, grapefruit, smoke, flowers and faintly toasty notes with a whiff of petrol underneath. Dry and medium bodied in the mouth with flavours of citrus fruits, flint, toasted almonds and good acidity. Finishes clean with a twist of faintly herbal flavours at the end. Delicious with plenty of depth and complexity, drinking really well now and I look forward to seeing if this'll keep developing over the next few years.

You might be interested in Tom Stevenson's article on Riesling chemistry and aromas HERE
Tom is an avid screwcap supporter and this also includes a small specific reference to petrol aromas in young Australian Rieslings under screwcap. It's a good wide-ranging article, both parts I and II, apart from his reference to Tyson Stelzer's discredited assertion about the 1200 [1227] oxtrans variability of natural cork as though it was still somehow current.