Against Wax Sealing Wine Bottles

As I sit here blotting the blood off my finger where a corkscrew savaged me, I have to ask whey any winery would wax seal the top of a bottle except as a way to make it look more 'special'. You usually can't pierce it easily with a corkscrew, you can't try and knock it off with the back of a knife blade without risking chipping the glass, and using any sort of plier device risks cracking the glass of the neck.

After the corkscrew serrated blade for removing the usual metal capsule slipped nd bit me, I resorted to quickly heating the wax over the flame of a gas element and then scraped it off. I can't see any point except for as an advertising gimmick for a winery to do this and given the improvement in regular closures whether natural or artificial, the ones that do dip the neck in wax do so out of pure advertising puffery to make the uneducated think that their wine is somehow 'special'.

There - thanks, it stopped bleeding (now I just have to wipe off the keyboard....)

[David M. Bueker]

Corkscrew straight through the wax has never failed me no matter how tough the wax.

Well, Bill.... there is wax & then there is wax. Some (a few) use a wax that is soft & pliable. Those are easy to work with. But many/most use a wax that is tough as nails & s bitch to peel off.
Hope the bleeding has stopped by now.
Tom

Corkscrew straight through the wax has never failed me no matter how tough the wax.

ditto

[Robin Garr]

Corkscrew straight through the wax has never failed me no matter how tough the wax.

ditto

Works for me too, but Bill has a point: It's a pain.

Plus, if you're looking at Maker's Mark bourbon, don't be taken in by the hype or the red wax. It's sweet and one-dimensional, made for tourists.

[David M. Bueker]

Corkscrew straight through the wax has never failed me no matter how tough the wax.

ditto

Works for me too, but Bill has a point: It's a pain.

Plus, if you're looking at Maker's Mark bourbon, don't be taken in by the hype or the red wax. It's sweet and one-dimensional, made for tourists.

It's actually made for hotel bars IMO!

I've opened two bottles by small-scale US producers recently -- annual case production probably in three digits rather than four, and I think they're basically solo or two-person operations -- both of which used wax, or some sort of plasticized wax-like seal. It seemed incongruous, and nothing else about the wines screamed "needless signifiers of luxury!" Is there something about this technique that makes it easier at the point of production (i.e., on the bottling line, or at whatever point capsules would normally be applied)?

Just putting the corkscrew through the wax and extracting the cork might not work for old bottles with soggy or crumbly corks. And yes, there's wax and then there's wax. Soft wax is not a problem, but sealing wax can be a pain in the butt.

The original purpose of bottle capsules of any sort was to prevent mice gnawing at the cork. Not a problem most modern wine enthusiasts face, I'm sure. Wax capsules are purely ornamental. But in the case of sealing wax, they can be downright dangerous.

-Paul W.

The original purpose of bottle capsules of any sort was to prevent mice gnawing at the cork. Not a problem most modern wine enthusiasts face, I'm sure. Wax capsules are purely ornamental. But in the case of sealing wax, they can be downright dangerous.
-Paul W.

My understanding was that it was to prevent cork weevils from invading the cork. But I may be wrong.
Never done did see a cork weevil in my life.
Tom

[Robin Garr]

My understanding was that it was to prevent cork weevils from invading the cork. But I may be wrong.
Never done did see a cork weevil in my life.
Tom

Now that actual cork seems to be (finally) really giving way to alternatives or at least technical cork, might the cork weevil be an endangered species?

[David M. Bueker]

Oh no! Endangered species!

Ban screw caps! Save the Weevil!!

Weevils or some other form of "shelf life" seems more plausible than mice, although the latter will gnaw at just about anything.

-Paul W.

OK, an addedum. Was going to a 1989 dinner last night, got Durand out, went to cellar and gently brought up 1989 Cavallotto Vigna San Giuseppe in cradle. Uh, huge mass of hard red wax. Waiters corkscrew did just fine, but there's a situation where a Durand ISN'T going to work,

No one knows what weevils lurk....(well, maybe the Shadow knows)

The soft wax (think candle wax) is easily dislodged with the little knife on most corkscrews, or by just putting the corkscrew right through it. It is the hard sealing wax that is a real PITA - so hard and so clingy that you can easily chip the glass edge of the bottle if you try and crack it off and very hard to penetrate with a corkscrew. As pointed out, it is really just a cosmetic touch added with no real functional advantage and while I rarely see it today, it annoys me every time I do.

One can try cracking the hard type off with the back of a knife, but I have seen others end up cracking a chip out of the bottle rim, and then you either toss the bottle if you can't find the chip or know it went into the bottle, or hope that you have some fine filtration available to sieve it out as you decant.

Another option would be Port tongs.

I wasn't familiar with the Durand (and given what they cost, probably never will be) and had to look it up. It looks like it might solve the problem I've always had when trying to use an ah-so--pushing the cork into the bottle. I use either a waiter's corkscrew or a screwpull* but I run into the occasional soggy or crumbly old cork where the corkscrew just drills a hole in the center of the cork. I've found that carefully running the knife blade of the corkscrew around the edge of the cork helps prevent it from sticking to the side of the bottleneck and makes it easier to extract intact.

-Paul W.

* Always buy your wine from a merchant with screwpulls.

I am pretty much convinced that the quality of corks in premium wines has changed, and not for the better. I rarely have any problems with my 40-50 year old Bordeaux but I do have issues with corks from wines from other areas that are half that age. I'm not going to venture an opinion on the other aspects of synthetic stoppers, but it is nice that when you see a plastic cork, you know you'll be able to get it out in one piece with a regular corkscrew.

Paul,
I love my Durand- a gift from Betsy, the perfect gift, something you know you want but just couldn't make yourself buy (in my case due to price). I've certainly gotten her money's worth out of it. Probably used 1000 times, all on older wines, maybe had an issue with 1 or 2 corks. But before I had Durand we'd sometimes do same idea using a waiters corkscrew and an Ah So in tandem. But you have to do waiters at an angle, the Durand you can go straight down. I wouldn't have bought, but now if I lost mine I'd buy in a heartbeat.

Bill, I haven't noticed that but the 80s were probably the height of TCA infection, a different marker of quality.

I'm a fan of Diam for alternate stoppers.

* Always buy your wine from a merchant with screwpulls.

Merchants around here demand payment in money

I am pretty much convinced that the quality of corks in premium wines has changed, and not for the better. I rarely have any problems with my 40-50 year old Bordeaux but I do have issues with corks from wines from other areas that are half that age. I'm not going to venture an opinion on the other aspects of synthetic stoppers, but it is nice that when you see a plastic cork, you know you'll be able to get it out in one piece with a regular corkscrew.

Lot to unpack here; part of the reason the corks of 50 year ago were better is that cork trees were stripped at much longer intervals. The big increase in wine drinking and thus wineries saw a huge demand for corks so the interval between bark stripping was shortened and shortened and there was in increase in corkiness.

And that was more apparent in New World wines, as the corks went first to the long standing customer wineries in the Old World who tested batches of corks, and rejected faulty batches. The cork companies just sent them on to the next group of wineries.
One reason New Zealand embraced screwcaps is that they felt they were the end of the line for corks and they were getting all the rejects.

Unlike you, I dislike plastic closures. The have a short life before losing elasticity and you don't know they are plastic when covered by a capsule. OK for wines you don't keep but no good for aging. Not to say I don't buy plastic closure wines; my weekly Montepulciano is plastic closed. Worst of all worlds, they need a corkscrew but strip off Teflon coatings from decent corkscrews. I keep an old bare metal corkscrew just for those wines and wish they go screwcap.

Regarding cork quality, there was a major problem in Burgundy in the mid to late 1990s. Not with crumbly corks but with TCA. I've lost a distressing number of top grands crus from that period to TCA.

-Paul W.