There is a lot of opinions on this one!!! How do you treat your corks before
bottling? Do nothing and insert dry, soak in Kmet solution, simmer in water
with or without Kmet ? I have done all the above except no treatment at all.
Doesn't no treatment open you to possible microbial contamination,
especially if the bag of corks is half used and left over from last year?
Bounce this one around!!!

Lou:

No bouncing required, you covered just about everything.

I rinse (NOT SOAK) the corks in sanitizer prior to use. Store unused
corks in a ziploc bag ( I prefer the thicker freezer ones).

Unless you buy a sealed bag of 1000 with SO2 inside (you should smell
it) you don't know for sure how the corks have been handled/stored.

Steve

On Sun, 21 May 2006 23:24:40 -0400, "Lou"
wrote:

There is a lot of opinions on this one!!! How do you treat your corks before
bottling? Do nothing and insert dry, soak in Kmet solution, simmer in water
with or without Kmet ? I have done all the above except no treatment at all.
Doesn't no treatment open you to possible microbial contamination,
especially if the bag of corks is half used and left over from last year?
Bounce this one around!!!

Agreed. This really has been covered. A lot. Wine is pretty
impervious to infection or Europe would have died out 1000 years ago.
I rinse natural corks, I spritz all corks with SO2 and let them drain
in a funnel. I buy corks in 1000's and use them over 3 or 4 years at
times, never had an issue other than with corks that were just plain
bad. I keep them in the bag rolled up tight and use a rubber band to
keep it closed.

If you squeeze it in your fingers and it doesn't give at all something
is wrong if it's a natural cork. It's either too dry or made from
inferior bark.

Joe

Ditto. I rinse in a dilute pot. meta solution.

A different question, that has always worried me;

when we homewinemakers (meaning - winemakers who produce relatively
small quantity) purchase corks, we are at risk of a 'batch' of TCA
contaminated corks. Anecdote; a fellow home vineyardist / winemaker had
an entire vintage tainted when the 1,000 cork bag he purchased tunred
out to be tainted.

So - how do wee guard against that?
I have been buying ny corks in smaller quantities, from a couple
different sources at different times. Too paranoid? Other measures to
guard against the loss of a lot of wine?

Ric,
I started using NomaCorc to get around that. I had about 200 TCA
tainted corks in 2002; it's infuriating. In hindsight I should have
known better than to use those corks, they felt funny, very stiff. I
actually quit using them and took the bag back for credit. When I cut
a few apart, the light color was only about 3/8 inch deep. The center
was very woody, porous and dark. The corks were awful. Good corks
never look like that, if you cut them apart they look about the same
inside as out and give a little when you squeeze them.

I started using NomaCorc in 2003 in a bigger way, so far so good. They
say the closure is good for 3 years. Most of my wines are gone in 3
years. I'll leave a few for 5 to 10 years to see how they do.

Joe

Another way to avoid this is buy good corks .
I used to skimp on them . Then I started thinking .... Here I have put all
this work into making the wine . Now I am worried about the difference
between .35 verses .65 cents on a cork . Buy the best cork you can and never
have to worry .
Greg



"Joe Sallustio" wrote in message
ups.com...
Ric,
I started using NomaCorc to get around that. I had about 200 TCA
tainted corks in 2002; it's infuriating. In hindsight I should have
known better than to use those corks, they felt funny, very stiff. I
actually quit using them and took the bag back for credit. When I cut
a few apart, the light color was only about 3/8 inch deep. The center
was very woody, porous and dark. The corks were awful. Good corks
never look like that, if you cut them apart they look about the same
inside as out and give a little when you squeeze them.

I started using NomaCorc in 2003 in a bigger way, so far so good. They
say the closure is good for 3 years. Most of my wines are gone in 3
years. I'll leave a few for 5 to 10 years to see how they do.

Joe

I use fresh corks as they come out of the bag. If I am going to have to
store them for a while, which means the may dry out, I store them in a
sealed primary bucket with an open bottle of NaMet solutions to maintain
sanitation and to keep the humidity up.

Ray

"Lou" wrote in message
...
There is a lot of opinions on this one!!! How do you treat your corks
before bottling? Do nothing and insert dry, soak in Kmet solution, simmer
in water with or without Kmet ? I have done all the above except no
treatment at all. Doesn't no treatment open you to possible microbial
contamination, especially if the bag of corks is half used and left over
from last year?
Bounce this one around!!!

I learned my lesson there; these were around $125/1000 and were awful.
I think the most we ever paid for good corks in quantities of 500 to
1000 was around $300/1000; usually half that. Synthetics are around
$0.15 to $0.20 in quantities of 1000.

I wouldn't say an expensive cork is immune to TCA though; NomaCorc has
already sold over a billion synthetics and they are only one supplier.
There are lots of horror stories of wineries with TCA issues.

Joe

The synthetic approach is the only way to go to completely avoid TCA -
price of cork doesn't appear to have any impact on likelihood of TCA
contamination, according to the commercial industry statistics. Thus
far I haven't tred the synthetics - Joe, do you use a standard table
top / floor standing cork press? any problems?

I use the Portuguese Floor corker. It works well.

I have heard of issues with the Ferrari brass jaws creating a slit in
the side of synthetics. Mine did that too. I noticed the iris would
shrink the cork to a point and then one jaw would separate a little at
the bottom of the stroke. I took it apart and reworked it and now it's
fine. (I would not suggest taking one apart, the springs are pretty
tough and it can fly apart like nobodies business.) It did bugger up
SupremeCorqs, I fixed it before I bought the Nomacorcs.

I quit using Supremecorq because the SO2 did drop in a year and a half,
white were oxidizing faster than I saw using real corks.

The Portuguese has plastic jaws and just doesn't do this, it's a nice
corker for the money.

Joe

"Lou" wrote in message
...
There is a lot of opinions on this one!!! How do you treat your corks
before bottling? Do nothing and insert dry, soak in Kmet solution, simmer
in water with or without Kmet ? I have done all the above except no
treatment at all. Doesn't no treatment open you to possible microbial
contamination, especially if the bag of corks is half used and left over
from last year?

I've used corks that have been dry for a decade or so with no problem.

Soak them in warm water for awhile (an hour or so), drain, soak again and
repeat until the water isn't brown. Drain and let them sit in a collander
while you're getting ready to bottle. When you're ready to use them they
should still be moist, but not gooshy. If they drip water when you compress
them in the corker they're too wet.

I may have had one bad bottle out of many thousands using this method. BTW,
there's no need to use sulfite to treat the corks because the wine already
has sufficient free SO2 - or at least it _should_.

Tom S
www.chateauburbank.com

Tom,
Have you ever seen the process used to mushroom a sparkling wine cork?
I'm thinking one of the issues I have had with them is thatI make so
few bottles the corks sit around too long and are just too dry. They
never fully re-expand. I'll try hydrating them like you say. I'm
wondering if there is another step where once the cork is partially
inserted they give it a 'tamp' to mushroom it before applying the wire
hood.

Joe

"Joe Sallustio" wrote in message
ups.com...
Tom,
Have you ever seen the process used to mushroom a sparkling wine cork?
I'm thinking one of the issues I have had with them is that I make so
few bottles the corks sit around too long and are just too dry. They
never fully re-expand. I'll try hydrating them like you say. I'm
wondering if there is another step where once the cork is partially
inserted they give it a 'tamp' to mushroom it before applying the wire
hood.

I really don't have any idea. The corks they use for champagne are very
different from those for still wines so a comparison isn't valid.

Tom S
www.chateauburbank.com