Kind of hard to see the line between too dry to form a good seal and too moist…to be antiseptic…as being clear enough to create consistency when things get near the line. I assume that corks , as a natural product, have a range of susceptibility to being more or less moist than other corks, even of the same treatment.
Let me know if the “industry” wants to try to some testing with Ampeau. Could the simple test of seeing how much SO2 remains in given bottles…at a certain point…seemingly reflect the integrity of the seals? That’s what one producer showed me he tested years ago…and the SO2 was gone from the premoxed bottles and intact otherwise.
I wonder whether the Burgundy bottle makers have a take on this whole issue, especially re: seals at their bottle neck?
I really do wonder whether anyone/any affected industry has really sought to get to the bottom of the [random] premox , which I think IS the “premox”…in Burgundy? Have we, as consumers, ever really seen any evidence of this…from ANY potentially implicated industry? Corks? Bottles? Bottling equipment? The wine “industry” there? (I exclude anything later in the chain of sales, as the experiments/tests I was told about in Burgundy in 2007, all happened with cases stored at the wineries…7-8 years after bottling. So, I have long discounted handling as not a factor in random spoilage.
Thoughts? Or are we the only ones even thinking about this issue?
This is likely related to different phases of the use cycle. Sounds like there is one ideal level of moisture before insertion where the primary goal is to reduce risk of an organism getting a foothold while the corks are “out there” in the environment exposed to things before bottling. And a different ideal level of moisture during and after insertion where the primary goals are a smooth insertion and maintaining a seal.
Just continue to remember that the general consumer has no clue about any of this, and we as an industry really are not doing much to educate them.
As I stated in another thread, I ask wine consumers all the time in my tasting room of they know what a ‘corked’ wine is. No. 1 answer (over 80%) - it’s when their is a cork in the bottle . . .
yes it happens. it doesn’t happen because of not meeting our own spec, it happens once in a while because some customers have their own individual spec and those can be abnormal. For instance i have a customer that wants everything above 7% (which i don’t recommend) and we know that depending on the time of year the moisture will drop .3 to 1% in a couple weeks after humidification (depending on storage environment). sometimes they will say that they find cork in high 6’s and send them back…
We check humidity more multiple times in process. The most important is just before packaging for final shipment. We will not pack the order unless it meets spec.
Thanks, Dustin. I am making assumptions. Mainly based on my talks last summer (2017) with Mr. Weber…who said he thought the “issue” was resolved. It was more vulnerable wines that was the cause of the problem. Case closed re: variability by closures.
I am not out to indict any industry/company on this problem. Just want to get a handle on it after years and years of no resolution-- and wasted expenditures by consumers like me.
Look forward to the specifics you describe…and…to continued cordiality on this subject.
I stopped buying wines a decade ago, so I have no “horse” in the current “race”. Just intellectual curiosity at this point…and frustration that such a seemingly simple issue (random bad bottles in every group) can’t find a culprit for the randomness, which is, I think, the extent of the “premox” problem.
I did read your post, and particularly the part where you asked whether “the wine industry there” has done research. I count the wine departments of French universities as part of the industry.
I wouldn’t expect the cork industry to focus its research dollars on this since the problem is relatively uncommon outside Burgundy. You are one of the few who thinks that a change in corks is a major factor. But we know that the seal with corks has always varied a huge amount. It seems more likely that changes in winemaking in Burgundy (picking riper with less acid, reduced sulfur, preventing oxidation of the must that precipitates out precursors to oxidative compounds) have made the wines more vulnerable to the ever-present differences in corks. (In many cases of premox outside Burgundy, the afflicted producers made similar changes in their winemaking methods.)
(And what are the “conflicting goals” for the cork industry? You seem to have missed Dustin’s point that they keep the humidity down during shipping to prevent mold, then raise it somewhat for pliability before bottling. There’s no “conflict” there – just quality control to prevent two potential problems.)
Coincidentally, we had a number of similar oxidation problems with whites (Chardonnay) from the same initial period as Burgundy did (that '95-'99 vintage period 3-5 years after bottling was when they started first popping up - guys like Leeuwin Estate reported a high incidence of from memory about 15%).
No winemaking or production changes such as those that seems to continually get dragged into this argument as an excuse re the cause of Burgundy premoxing…
Many producer then starting to switch to screwcap from about 2001/2002 on (including a number of the affected ones that I knew of).
Funnily enough, the Premox problems seem to 100% have stopped.
When one talks about ‘premoxed’ wines from other regions, and they are not as often or ‘prevalent’, I have to believe it’s either something to do with the cork or storage/transportation issues where the wine was exposed to elevated temperatures.
A couple of other things to consider - higher than expected dissolved oxygen in the bottle at bottling; lower use of SO2; higher pHs of the wines that year versus others.
It also may have to do with expectations - perhaps some wines are simply not going to stand the test of time as we expect?
M. Mowe, thank you for all of your answers. There has been a lot of at least anecdotal evidence here and elsewhere that wines sealed with DIAM do not have the premixed problem, even with respect to producers (e.g., Fevre) where there was a premox issue previously. Do you agree or disagree that this is the case.
If it is the case, do you agree then that something about the corks being used are at least part of the reason we are seeing premox issues? If not, why would the use of DIAM solve the problem?
I cannot agree nor disagree because to be honest i dont have enough FACTS. I have been involved directly in the US market not Burgundy and so all my info from that market are a bit biased as they come from my colleagues in France or Portugal. I have tried to dissect the info i have taking into consideration my knowledge of natural cork and how cork interacts with wine post bottling. What i think is there was a change in winemaking elevating the problem to a much higher level than previously. I also know this issue is not even close to as relevant in other markets that too age white wines and use natural cork stoppers (that perhaps use higher levels of So2 at bottling??)… For white wine sensitive to oxygen and using a natural cork, the wine must be protected with a minimum of 35 to 40 mg/L of SO2. Otherwise, there is some risks that wines will develop a little more that the winemaker would like.
Regarding Diam (which is a microagglomerated cork), i dont think it solved the issue. Micro Agglomerated corks are very close to screwcap serantin. They give a touch of oxygen at bottling (diffusion from the cork compression and insertion in the bottle) but then almost flat line after. Micro agglomerated corks because of their density and being a manufactured product are more consistent. However, long term evolution suffers because there is no real evolution. with a natural cork they tend to continue to allow wine ageing via a “micro oxygenation” (a continued diffusion of oxygen from within the cells of the cork over time).
Another important component which we are studying and believe based upon the results we already have is that there is a significant positive phenolic contribution of whole piece natural cork that you get very little of with micro agglomerated corks and obviously zero of that with plastic or screwcap closures.
Thank you for your responses. Have others found that with wines closed with DIAM that “long term evolution suffers because there is no real evolution.” I have only had young wines that are closed with DIAM and they have all been good. However, I thought that others have had positive views of evolution of wines closed with DIAM (see, e.g., 2010 White Burgundy Vintage Assessment Dinners – Night Three "Mostly Montrachet" – March 7, 2018 at Melisse - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers ) but would love to read more about the experiences of board members in this regard.
Please note that evolution does most likely take part in DIAM wines, just as it does in screw cap wines. There is a fallacy that there is no oxygen introduced during the aging of wines under screw cap - just not true.
Dustin’s last point is an interesting one and one that has been revealed and discussed recently - that there is a ‘positive phenolic contribution’ from whole piece natural corks. The feeling is that whole piece natural corks ‘impart’ something that agglomerated corks do not. And DIAM would not since the supercritical CO2 process that removes TCA also removes other ‘flavor’ and ‘aroma’ compounds that otherwise might’ ‘contribute’ or at least ‘impart’ something to the finished wine.
As far as the term ‘favorable’ goes, I guess I would need to know what these compounds are, in what quantities they get into a wine, and how much of an ‘affect’ they have on a wine.
No skin in the game here as I’ve explained elsewhere other than to see a return to the pre-premox works if possible and find the best closure from the consumer perspective. Thanks for engaging with us highly interested folks.
But your comments about screwcap and DIAM seem to assume they cannot be engineered to achieve a consistent and beneficial interface (i.e., diffusion volume) between the wine in bottle and the atmosphere above the closure. I thought one of the points of DIAM in particular was to try to engineer the interface and either “optimize” it or emulate natural cork without cork’s various issues, which engineering may or may not be possible currently - not saying the goal is yet achieved—we need more data. I think one can’t at this point rule out that a DIAM has, or could, achieve the same phenolic contribution as natural cork. (The evidence for a screwcap seal on this so far that I have seen is not favorable to screwcaps because the seal is too good, avoiding premox but retaining various sulfur compounds that a diffusion volume seal may allow to dissipate over time. Still waiting for data on this before posting in the other thread on screwcaps.)
Also your comments seem to assume that oxygen flowing in is the key mechanism to what you called phenolic contribution. Whereas it very well may be outgasing that changes the chemistry in the bottle that is more important or at least an important contributing factor over time.
In my ideal world we (the world) can engineer a closure that provides an optimized inert cost-effective fake cork or a screwcap with diffusive characteristics that can be dialed in to spec. I know it might kill the natural cork industry but it also seems inevitable.
![[soap.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7ea1fffd3ef237e8f19d17a83270ad8452218ca.gif "soap"){kind=small}