Recorking.

[James_Billy]

@Todd Hamina

Pretty tight seal. Stays primary for a long time.

Not that long. My 2007 Yellowtail is showing worrying sign of aging.

[Oliver_V]

@SteveG

noting,

I don’t sell wine, invest in wine, or transport wine (other than to the table)

but over the last few years I have opened and drunk about 150 bottles from the 60’s and 70’s, and plenty of them have had corks which weere squishy, crumbly, loose-fitting, cemented to the bottle neck, split into several pieces, soaked…pretty much anything you might expect to see after removing an old cork from a bottle. But I have found to my satisfaction that as long as the cork kept the wine inside the bottle, it was discharging its job perfectly well, and probably would have continued to do so for many years to come.

While I can envision circumstances where changing a functioning cork might be adviseable, storing wine for future drinking is not one of them.

I completely agree. If the cork is leaking wine, it’s more often than not indicative of a storage problem, which it’s quite beneficial to know about. The worry I have about recorked wine is that it disguises the fact that the wine may have been exposed to less than ideal conditions. This is also an issue with screw caps.

It’s a pain to open some of them, but that just takes practice and the right tools.

[David_M]

@Joe Webb

with a hand corker not on a bottling line that can sparge the headspace and provide a vacuum.

No inert gas sparge and/or vacuum? Me no likey. I’ve hand bottled magnums, some with a hand corker and others though the bottling line. The mags corkeded by the hand corker have pushed corks when shipped and the ones off of the bottling line did not.

Also, bottles with different ullages being topped by a wine with static so2 levels will lead to bottle variation.

[James_Billy]

@Oliver Viveier

I completely agree. If the cork is leaking wine, it’s more often than not indicative of a storage problem, which it’s quite beneficial to know about. The worry I have about recorked wine is that it disguises the fact that the wine may have been exposed to less than ideal conditions. This is also an issue with screw caps.

As long as you are storing your own wine, why would this be an issue?

[Todd_Hamina]

@James Billy

@Todd Hamina

Pretty tight seal. Stays primary for a long time.

Not that long. My 2007 Yellowtail is showing worrying sign of aging.

Perhaps some Mollydooker is in order?

[Ian_Sutton]

@James Billy

@Todd Hamina

Pretty tight seal. Stays primary for a long time.

Not that long. My 2007 Yellowtail is showing worrying sign of aging.

and you’re showing worrying signs of wine choice

[Joe_Webb]

@David M.

@Joe Webb

with a hand corker not on a bottling line that can sparge the headspace and provide a vacuum.

No inert gas sparge and/or vacuum? Me no likey. I’ve hand bottled magnums, some with a hand corker and others though the bottling line. The mags corkeded by the hand corker have pushed corks when shipped and the ones off of the bottling line did not.

Also, bottles with different ullages being topped by a wine with static so2 levels will lead to bottle variation.

The vacuum created only last from a few days to a couple weeks. When hand corking you need to leave the bottles upright for at least a week to allow the pressure to equalize if not you will get wine leaking. If you got pushed corks during shipping they bottles got to hot in transit or the fill levels were to high and there was not enough head space to absorb the increase of pressure.

I dont disagree different ullages would lead to some bottle variation. I have never done re-corking or seen it done, just passing on the stories I have heard over the years. If a case of wine is stored in the same location I don’t see the ullages being all that different though and I would assume the so2 adds were very low.

[Oliver_V]

@James Billy

@Oliver Viveier

I completely agree. If the cork is leaking wine, it’s more often than not indicative of a storage problem, which it’s quite beneficial to know about. The worry I have about recorked wine is that it disguises the fact that the wine may have been exposed to less than ideal conditions. This is also an issue with screw caps.

As long as you are storing your own wine, why would this be an issue?

Would only be an issue if it changes hands after recorking, which is inevitably going to happen with some recorked bottles eventually.

[James_Billy]

Oliver, I mean if you buy screw capped bottles and cellar them yourself you don’t need to worry about provenance, so this ‘advantage’ of corks isn’t relevant.

[Oliver_V]

@James Billy

Oliver, I mean if you buy screw capped bottles and cellar them yourself you don’t need to worry about provenance, so this ‘advantage’ of corks isn’t relevant.

Yeah, I get that. It just doesn’t apply to everybody- only those who buy their wine solely as a direct purchase from the producer (which for me is about 5% of the time I’d estimate).

In all other cases, provenance is a factor, and the cork sometimes provides an indication of that provenance where the appearance of the wine would not.