Tom, und alles, qul ragoul,and everybody,

I am always interested in discussion about corks. Screw caps seem to be the
up and coming answer but there may be a couple of drawbacks.

1. I presume that the wine must be stored standing on end as opposed to
lying on their sides in a wine rack. I "presume" because I would expect
that contact of the wine with the interior of the screw cap with its
relatively thin sealing material would be detrimental to both the wine and
the cap. Standing on end for storage takes up a lot more room than being
racked in the normal way. I have very limited space and I rack 99 bottles in
a space 90cms high by 75 wide by about 35 cms deep -- 9 bottles per level
11 levels. I would only get half that quantity stored in the normal dozen
sized cardboard cases.

2. I am also concerned on the quality of the seal between the lip of the
bottle and the internal coating of the screw cap. I confess that I haven't
looked at what material is used currently but it always used to be a thin
layer of cork covered with a thin paperlike plastic disc. As a home wine
maker I would also find it difficult to produce the same quality of seal
that is created by what ever machine "caps" the screwtop bottles.

I have expressed my opinion on corks and corking previously -- especially
for the small home winemaker -- currently I standardise on a particular type
of traditional cork available in UK and my Portuguese floor corker. I insert
corks dry directly from the package without any treatment whatsoever. I have
now been doing this for 2 years and my inherent empirical taste opinions are
that I am so much happier with the long term results.

Merry Christmas to everyone.

--
Trevor A Panther
In South Yorkshire, England
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"Tom S" > wrote in message
m...
>
> "Don S" > wrote in message
> om...
> > > I've done that already, to my satisfaction. Red wine ages just fine
> under
> > > screw caps. Mine was a 1984 vintage Cabernet that I tasted ~15 years
> later
> > > at the same time I tasted the same wine that had been cork finished.
> The
> > > difference was slight; perhaps even imaginary.
> >
> > Thanks for posting that Tom, it seemed to nicely cap a
> > good thread.
> >
> > Are you thinking of switching everything over to caps?
>
> I'd *love* to use Stelvin screwcaps for my commercial wines, but the
winery
> only handles corks at the moment. I'll continue to lobby hard for a
> screwcap line, but I don't have $50K to pay for the mods. I'm also
lobbying
> for a centrifuge, but I don't have the $$ for that either. It isn't _my_
> winery anyway; I just rent space there.
>
> Tom S
>
>