Corks and Screwcaps, the Real Reason!

This is a subject that polarises people within the industry and leaves the customer feeling ill at ease with not knowing who is right.

Cork taint was a problem, no one can deny that, but were the stats correct?

Of all of the wine I have tasted I have only had 2 significantly corked wines. This leads me to suppose that the stats are slightly squewed to promote an alternative closure, that only saves the industry thosands of dollars but leaves the customer without the romance of history and opening a bottle of wine and not an industrial product like fizzy cola.

An average cork costs, in New Zealand, $1.50 when you compare the cost of a screwcap at $0.15c there are sums that don't need to much calculation to work out the wineries are saving a lot of money. I feel that it is at the expense of quality wine.

Yeah sure you can find all of the statistics to support screwcaps if you look hard enough, or you are a proponent of the Stelvin closure. The cork offers a more natural experience where what is in the bottle somehow reflects the season/vintage from which that wine was made.

The shear process of making aluminium stelvin closures is environmentally disaterous. One of the significant environmental consequences of aluminium production is the emission of perfluorcarbons (PFCs), powerful greenhouse gases which remain permanently in the atmosphere once released.

Harvesting Cork is a very natural process, where the bark of Quercus Suber the cork oak tree is taken every nine years and made into many items including that of cork closures for wine.

Having tried many of the same wines under both closures, I know what I prefer. If you want to drink wine that doesn't age properly and doesn't represent anything except generic juice then by all means drink wine under screwcap but don't inflict that industrial dross on the rest of us!

under screwcap but don't inflict that industrial dross on the rest of us!

The Wine Vault

Wines Tasted This Week.

Champagne Bruno Paillard $89.99 and Deval-Leroy 1996 $89.99.

The Champagne from Bruno Paillard was extraordinary with beautiful floral and biscotti aromas on the nose with hints of citrus and cream. On tasting the wine one was left with impression that it was a vintage wine rather than a Non-Vintage. It displayed elegance that most well made vintage Champagnes exude.

The subtle fruit was beautifully layered with grapefruit, lemon, and pineapple. There was a delightful yeasty character that when added to the biscotti and fruit made for a very pleasurable experience.

In my humble opinion this is probably the best Non-Vintage Champagne that is available to the good folk of New Zealand.

The Deval-Leroy 1996 (one of the best vintages for Champagne) lacked some of the finesse of the Bruno Paillard. The bead was more coarse and the delicate aromas were much more one dimensional and clumsy.

The quality of the wine was questionable given the year. There were some very good points to this wine but too many negatives when compared with the Non-Vintage wine we had just tasted.

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Hatton Estate 'Tahi' Verticle Tasting.

We attended a verticle tasting of Hatton Estates 'Tahi' meaning one in Maori at Rocco this week.

The verticle tasting included wines from 1998 through to 2006, with a few exceptions of 1999 and 2001. This was due to poor fruit quality for the Tahi and was then put inot the reserve wine.

The 1998 was very European in style with lots of layers and was a great example of New Zealand wine being able to age well.

The 2000 Tahi changed in style to that of an Australian wanna be. Deep dark fruit and slightly over extracted and was drinking much better than the '98 but only a few years left and so was propbably best to drink this wine ASAP.

We then moved onto the 2001 which also showed good fruit concentration but lacked charm and was slightly green on the nose and stalky on the palate.

The 2002 was ripe and delicious but needed to be drunk reasonably soon and the 2003 was of the same ilk.

We then moved to 2004 where the wines started to reflect the qualities of the 1998. It was the 2004 vintage where the winemaker changed to that of a young Frenchman with obvious talent and an eye for detail.

The 2005 was the only wine which did not include Merlot felt out of place and slightly uptight compared to the rest of the wines but was of good quality and ripeness of fruit.

The final 2006 was very ripe and had started to develope well and is soon to be bottled and should start drinking well from 2010 onwards.

The evening was a great sucess and the wines reflected this and wouldn't look too far out a place against the best Bordeaux blends that this country makes.