2. They’re nice to look at, but serve no real purpose.
3. Good for young wines, but no so much for old wines.
4. Pain in the ass!
5. Peyton Manning.
0voters
We had a bottle of the new release Belle Glos Pinot last night, and I’ve gotta tell you that it really is a beautiful bottle presentation. If you haven’t seen it, it is the Maker’s Mark of Pinot. But opening the wine was really something of a pain in the ass. The pull tab snapped before I got all the way around the neck. My waiter’s tool wine opener slid down through the wax.
There are several wines that have wax capsules that I really enjoy. Dunn Howell Mountain is the most notable, but by the time you get around to opening those, the twenty-year-old wax is brittle and flies all over the room when you try to get through it (I like to take them to restaurants so I don’t have to deal with them at home). Sanguis uses a wax capsule, and it is by far the easiest to open that I’ve found. I’ve had Falla and Brewer Cliftons with wax.
My understanding is that there are no technical advantages to wax - its more porous to air than metal or plastic capsules.
I kinda like 'em personally. What I have found though is that the wax on French wines seems much harder and more brittle than that on domestic wines. At least in my experience. I think the presentation is awesome though.
No option for #2 and #4. Sometimes they look cool but in practice they are a PIA. I have also noticed what you have in that some break much easier than others. The softer examples are easier to deal with in that you don’t have to break them off. You can just put the opener through them and peel off the bits that are still in the way.
PITA, for sure on old European wines (see, e.g., Lopez de Heredia), but I think they provide 2 benefits and I like them, net: 1. I think they provide a little more resistance to air for the cork, and 2. I think they should be harder to fake than capsules, or at least to fake them to look old.
I appreciate the pull-tab on Belle Glos - haven’t had trouble with it breaking. I really like the wax capsule on Ceritas wines. It looks cool and yet comes off really easily just by corkscrewing through it. Don’t try that with Brewer-Clifton, though, unless you want to buy a new Screwpull (unfortunately, I speak from experience).
Actually, the Raveneau type capsules are quite easy to deal with, thanks to Manfred Krankl’s advice: rub your hand briskly across the top of the wax capsule sufficiently for the friction heat to soften it a bit. Then drill your corkscrew worm through the softened wax. Works every time.
You’re right that they’re a pain in the ass, but I’m not sure they’d be particularly hard to fake. On the other board, someone who knew about wax said it’ isn’t an effective seal against air.
The Belle Glos, and many other waxed bottles, look absolutely beautiful. But they are such a bitch to get through. I have concluded that there are a couple of different types of wax, some of which are easy to cut through and peel off and then pull the cork, and one that basically requires pushing the pulltab through the wax itself and pulling the cork out and then peeling away the wax on the side of the bottle lip. The problem is, to my eye at least, there is no way to tell between the two until you start opening the bottle. It is incredibly frustrating, and in a restaurant situation, it is both embarrassing and humbling to do that at a table or credenza in the middle of a packed dining room. Not that that it and of itself is a bad thing, since a lot of people in my line of work could use to be humbled from time to time.
Why are these fracking things a good idea exactly? Whoever thinks they are should shove a beehive up their butt and enjoy the wax that way instead of torturing us with it.
The visual image of you, hunched over a computer screen with lines of Cellartracker code, kleenex in hand, is something that I need to expunge from my brain. Thanks for that!
