Opinions wanted re:DIAM and like corks

We have slowly integrating these into the white programs with good success. Roederer up here has been doing trials for 6-7 years now with good success for the still wines. They were so happy they worked with them to create a sparking replacement called the MYTIK they are starting to phase in.
When I had a corked bottle of PN the other night it got me thinking about doing some/all the reds in the future as well. I have noticed many other producers I buy from using this type of closure more these days. We have had no comments either negative or positive from retail/restaurants or our direct consumers.
I hate not getting enough bottles back to match the 1-2% corked rate we see in the tasting room. We get only a handful of bottles back each year I often wonder if consumers know the standard policy in the biz is to replace the bottle.

I am not into screw caps for may reasons and the only thing I don’t like about the diam is getting it back in the bottle after opening.

Any others with experience/comments/opinions?

What’s the price difference on these from regular corks? Are you doing this solely to guard against taint, or is your decision also based on cost? I had to go onto the DIAM website to familiarize myself with the product. I have never considered anything but natural cork, but am always interested in learning.

Hi Joe,

We have been using the rich xiberta variation of the Diams extensively since last June. I switched to them after getting complaints from the local Whole Foods buyer (an account I very much want to be happy!) about cork taint. I had played with synthetic on and off for years but the QC on the things was spotty at best. So that April I did a test run with one of our limited releases to see 1) how did it perform and 2) what would be my customers’ reaction to it. For the record I did not have high hopes.

To my absolute astonishment, neither my DTC nor my restaurant customers didn’t seem to care-- unlike when I had tried using synthetics which usu got a very negative reaction. By September, I switched wholesale to these corks except for our vintage port since there just isn’t enough of a track record for long aging wines. Whole foods is pleased as are my other restaurant and retail accounts.

From a production point of view, the micro-aglo that I use seems to slow the aging of the wine a bit but taint issues vanished as did any leakers.

Stuart - interesting information - thanks for joining the discussion.

I don’t use them, but have considered them as well

I recently noticed that Fevre, starting with their 2007 vintage, switched to Diam corks for their village and premier cru chablis (they apparently did a several year evaluation prior to this). And starting with their 2010 vintage, they switched their Grand Cru Chablis to Diam as well. Fevre made comments that they switched their Grand Cru over because they were very happy with the performance of their premier cru. Afaik tho, Bouchard (owned by the same owner as Fevre) hasn’t switched over…so don’t know what to make of that. Anyways, thought that Fevre’s evaluation/success with this was interesting (course, I think anything related to Chablis is interesting).

Another random point of interest: Diam’s top cork apparently comes in two different O2 transmission rates (I believe one is similar to ‘typical’ corks, and the other has a much lower O2 rate).

With Fevre’s track record on premox this doesn’t really surprise me. [stirthepothal.gif]

This is info is interesting though in that I have had zero trust in plastic corks up until now due to bad experiences in the past. It sounds like there have been real improvements but what you guys are saying. Great info!

Diam isn’t a plastic cork tho. It’s an “agglomerated” cork…i.e. pieces of cork with a binder. Diam removes (effectively) all of the TCA from the cork bits prior to putting them back together again. So they’ll retain their elasticity, which was the problem with plastic corks. Questioning the longevity of the binder is reasonable tho…but diam has been at this a while (more than 10 years?). Anyways, looks like an interesting option.

Wrt Fevre and premox…looks like Fevre is picking earlier than they used to (also starting in 07 I believe), so that extra acid can only help their premox record…which was esp sad in 02. Also wrt premox: apparently the BIVB (burgundy industry organization) completed a many year evaluation of premox causes (completed some time ago, I’m vague on exactly when). The study assumed there would be a single cause, or that’s what the study looked for…and concluded there wasn’t a single cause. They’ve started another more in depth study.

Thanks for the info again, Eric. My bad on the Diam.

Merrill, we switched over due to taint tho I am sure that for many wineries the reduced price vs natural cork is a significant factor. I looked/trialed the Diams too but could not detect a performance difference vs xiberta. The cost per thousand we pay is $160 and the quoted price we got last April from Diam was, as I recall, about $220/bag. The deciding factor for me was the responsiveness of the xiberta sales staff. Incidentally I was turned on to this type of closure by the folks out at Copain.

Stewart? From Fresno? Welcome!
I did a Diam thread on eBlob a few years ago. I know Nate Weiss chimed in about them only claiming a less-than (can’t remember the level) level of TCA guaranteed, but not a zero level. I got a trial kit of their cork material, which came with other competitor cork material. Three jars of cork to be soaked for a day or so. After the recommended soak time, the Diam did smell more neutral that the other cork, but if you let it soak for a very long time (I think I left it soak for a couple of weeks) you could smell a very slight corkiness. I know they have been getting popular with sparkling producers (because you have to use agglom with them), but I am still not convinced it is a better alternative for still wines.

Here is my take on them, having never done any trials or worked with them (so you get what you pay for re: my opinion).

DIAM was originally developed by Sabate, which ultimately became Oeno. Sabate was the company that gave us Altec, which was a complete disaster and eventually led to the Sabate family exiting the business, effectively running them into the ground.

Altec was an agglomerated cork product. It was a disaster because it basically did what still makes me nervous about agglomerates: you take your TCA/TBA risk and distribute it evenly among 100% of your batch. In essence, if you had, say, 10 corks, rather than have one cork with 3.0 ppt TCA and the rest with none, you could agglomerate them and have all 10 be at 0.3 ppt. To me, underlying low-level TCA/TBA would be a much bigger concern than a few spotty issues with really bad corks. When Altec took off, Sabate basically lost control of their materials sourcing and started taking shite cork and adding it to the mix. That eventually led to Altec ruining whole runs of wines, and Sabate being sued by a team of producers.

Maybe the super-critical CO2 is the answer? I really don’t know. Sure sounds good, but then so did the plastic corks originally? Yes, they only guarantee <0.5 ppt, which is not 0, but my guess is that is a limit of detection thing rather than any indication of the effectiveness of what they’re doing. Still, though, what happens when you open up your first bottle with a DIAM and get a whiff of TCA? Guarantees of this sort of nature make me a little nervous.

There are enough stories like Altec that I, and you can call me cynical, will probably never be an early adopter of the new “perfect” closure. For the smashing success that is Stelvin (which has taken quite a while to work out all the kinks), there are also Altec, SupremeCorq, MetaCork, the Zork, and a recent thread here suggested that even the Germans are starting to wane on the VinoLok.

This is nothing against DIAM specifically. Just a general approach to closures, being (and always having been) a very happy cork user [soaker].

I love natural corks, but hate the rate of failure. I’ve popped hundreds, maybe thousands of bottles sealed with DIAM corks in my career, and have yet to encounter a single wine that had noticeable TCA. The only knock that I’ve heard against them (I haven’t personally experienced this) is that at high temps (40+ degrees C/104 degrees F) they have left a chemical/adhesive flavor behind in the wine.

I would suggest that at that temperature, the least of your worries is what the cork is doing (besides maybe ejecting from the bottle.)

I liken that to protein precipitation trials (we test to 45 degrees C/ 113 F). If you are getting flakes at those temps, the wine is probably undrinkable anyway.

Cheers,
Bill

They are cheaper than regular corks but as with many things in the fine wine biz does not matter as much as the quality of the wine in the bottle which is horrible if tainted. We had some really great by the glass placements that we had some push back with due to corked bottles which is why I started using these in the first place. We have not had a single complaint or negative comment regarding the switch.
As I have been paying more and more attention and tracking the corked bottles we get in the tasting room(1% reds, 2% whites) vs. how many we get returned (less than 10 bottles per year) I have realized there are up to 100 or so bad bottles that never get returned. I fear I may have lost those customers who wont pick it up but wont like or buy our wines again.

I have personally from my cellar returned about 25 bottles over the last few years. Every winery was prompt to replace the bottle and ship it to me at no charge which is what I do for all my customers as it is industry practice. Maybe I need to start a educational campaign for our consumers. I have also entertained the idea of doing what Brian Loring has done in the past partially to correct for some closure mishaps he had mainly with plastic. When you place your order with him the last screen gives a list of every wine they made and simply asks you to select any wines you have had a problem with and how many bottles and they replace them.

I have not had great experience with screw caps and our style of reductive wine making would not lend our wines to be very compatible. The wines just need that time in bottle under cork to get to where I want them to be for release. Screw cap wines to me taste the same the day their bottled as they do a couple years down the road. When in NZ 2.5 years ago we were able to taste verticals of several producers Pinot Noirs. The older wines under cork had evolved in depth complexity and secondary flavors that I love. The ones under screw cap were not recognizable as older wines and tasted very young and fresh. Which may be good for some just not me.

I think the ullage (evaporation) on the barrel is similar to that in cork and I like how the wines seem to progress in a similar linear pattern. I have in the past read a couple of stories regarding the transmission of O2 thru cork stating little to no actual transmission of O2 other than what is naturally in the cork. Though that does not explain missing wine due to ullage.

So I am a lover of cork but not the taint issues which is where this type of technology comes into play.
Anyone seeing less than 1% corked rate on natural corks? If so who are you buying from?
I have used a few companies in the past and now use Lafitte and Cork supply USA.

Bumping up this thread to see if anyone has had any additional experience with or information about Diam. Thanks.

Some modest amount of credit might go to a certain lawyer who utterly eviscerated the BS surrounding that allegedly “taint free” product, to the point where Sabate’s expert admitted under oath that the effort to sell the product without scientific support was like “selling snake oil”.

Or so I’ve heard.

Thanks for pointing that out.

That Robert Shapiro sure is sharp.

neener

Liquid Farm uses them… and I like the wines, plenty!

I’ve used Diams on reds other than Gamay, since the '07 vintage, and not had a single corked bottle. The '07s are holding up just fine, also.

I’m taking the plunge on DIAMs with my next bottling. I have gotten some feedback from customers who hate the difficulty of extracting agglomerated (not necessarily DIAM) corks from the bottle. Anyone else run into this issue?