So not that zero ullage means better aging . . .
Anyone notice any ullage in wines aged in DIAMs over time?
Cheers
There it is! Very cool. With only 12, I doubt we’ll ever hear anything about any of them. We know it won’t be corked!
Theoretically they could be contaminated with TCA at the winery prior to or during bottling, which would be very ironic.
What does “fantastic” mean here? Tertiary? Evolved? Youthful? Like it was bottled a week ago?
From my experience the wines bottled under screw caps don’t really evolve - or if they do, at a glacial pace.
Typically when they are tasted blind, I guess them to be 1/3 to 1/4 of their actual age. So if a wine is 15 years old, my typical guess is that the wine is probably 4-5 years old. I don’t really consider this to be a good thing, since I age wines so that I can enjoy aged wines. If I like how a wine is normally at 20 years of age, by this logic I should keep it for 60-80 years, if it is bottled under a screw cap. Not really a tempting prospect.
Still lots to understand, and we should beware of generalising about screwcaps, as beyond the original ones, a degree of oxygen transmission was designed into them, tailored to the preference of the winery.
I share the interest in seeing what maturity / over-maturity in screwcaps is like. Will it be the same, but delayed (like the best quality cork), or will the path be different?
In reality, we will never know since the same wines are not being bottled under different closures on a regular basis…
There are question-marks being raised over just what maturity under screwcap tastes like. Given the vast experience of how mature wine tastes under cork, there ought to be solid (qualitative) insight into whether the path is different (e.g. in how tannins in particular soften / drop out). i.e. the comparison not ‘like for like’ on wines/vintages, but more whether obvious differences in ageing profile emerge.
What we currently lack, is a solid volume of screwcap sealed wine that has reached / passed maturity. Better on whites, given Australia’s early (but not consumer supported) adoption, particularly with Rieslings.
One of the best ‘comparisons’ state side would be Plumpjack’s Reserve Cab - done under both closures since the 1997 vintage - and continued to this day.
Also, what time frame are we looking for reaching/passing maturity? 15 years? 20 years?
Cheers
The SO2 in the wine is enough to counteract all of the oxygen dissolved in the wine and in the headspace, but not all the oxygen sealed in the cork? Is that the general idea?
That’d suggest that natural wines without SO2 should be bottled under screw cap?
This comment is targeted more at the aging of white wines, although is relevant to red wine. The evolution of many aroma compounds is driven by hydrolysis, and is therefore not directly related to closure. The rate of hydrolysis is generally affected mostly by storage temperature and pH. A classic example of this is acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of aroma precursors that leads to the development of the petrol aroma in aged Riesling (although AWRI showed this aroma is absorbed with varying efficiencies by different closures).
As well as the wines with most aging history (e.g. bordeaux) not being bottled under screwcap at all for comparison.
Is there a chance that some of the aged flavors are imparted by the decomposition of the cork itself?
We know broadly what the timescale is for cork, but I don’t recall ever reading a TN of a screwcapped wine that was over-mature, so that question difficult to answer.
I would suggest they not be bottled at all.
This relates to my quandry re wine aging: is it more dependent on what’s in the bottle (as well as temperature), or on air slowly coming in through the cork? I am pretty convinced it’s the former, but don’t have a strong scientific foundation for that belief.
Indeed. And this applies to some non-volatile components too, such as the quercetin glycosides, which convert to the insoluble aglycone over time by acid hydrolysis, with likely implications for texture, color, and solubility/sediment formation. And what remains completely unknown is how the interplay of redox-sensitive and redox-insensitive aging reactions contribute to the profile of a “well-aged” wine. Wine is not inert in the absence of oxygen, but is it going to evolve (a) desirably, and (b) over reasonable timescales (as Otto points out)?
These things are all an absolute pain from an analytical perspective, too, making data interpretation more challenging. Just as a small example, higher oxygen ingress is associated with more rapid degradation of thiophenols, which contribute discernible aromatic character to barrel-aged red wines. Anyone who’s ever worked in a lab in Earth’s atmosphere trying to measure oxygen-sensitive compounds at parts per trillion can tell you this is no easy feat.
And as you point out, Bill, the question of closures scavenging highly non-polar components is yet another question.
This is the article I mentioned earlier
It does touch on some of the discussion here, but sensibly he also wrote
If you want a conclusion, then the best I can give is this: it is complicated.
Developed, complex, evolved, delicious. Matured as I would hope and expect.
My experience with ageing and drinking wines under screw cap goes back about 20 years.
I have found that the vast majority evolve and develop vwry well. The only significant exception is Hunter Semillon.
My experience after many many bottles over an extended period is very different to yours.
EDIT: The experienced wine drinkers that I know here in NZ who have been cellaring wines under screw cap for 15+ years would also dismiss the “ageing at a glacial pace” characterization. When you buy and cellar screw capped wines, you can easily observe and monitor their develop over an extended period of time. The development and maturity becomes clear. Of course wine under screw caps age differently and slower than under cork. But evolve and develop nicely they do. The wine makers I have spoken to in NZ about this pretty much say exactly this.
I would guess it is the same in Australia.
Cheers Brodie
I mean, there are some very good wines bottled without sulfur, including some wines by Allemand, rogeuot, lapierre, etc.
The Rougeot Clos de Roses sans soufre was way more expressive than the so2 version at paulee last year.
The only instance I know of this is the ampoule, which was not done as a study, but rather an interesting marketing idea. I believe they did package the same wine under cork, so theoretically one could compare the two, but so few ampoules were made that I don’t know if anything meaningful could be learned.
edit: I see that Brodie beat me to it.