How do you protect the capsule/seal of your very old wines?

[Eric_Egan]

@alan weinberg

@Mark Y

Curious does wax prevent seepage? Oxidation? As basically no air can get in?

my understanding is no, no, and no. For example, Raveneau wax capsules get broken when cork rises due to heat, can seep (Leroy prime example), ullage increases over time, and occasionally premoxes.

Indeed, as Soren also says, wax has a tendency to break if the cork is pushed outwards. For that reason I would always use film and an elastic band during transport, as the film would stretch before breaking. Thats the same reasoning behind why I store some of my more fragile older wines like this; I imagine it lends them an extra barrier to the dangerous air outside, but perhaps thats just wistful thinking…

[Phil_David]

Good grief. This seems much more about collector-fetishisation than actual wine.

Surely the most obvious thing to do with a suspect bottle is open it. What’s the point of having all these old wines if you’re not planning to drink any of them?

[Dennis_Kanagie]

@Phil David

Surely the most obvious thing to do with a suspect bottle is open it. What’s the point of having all these old wines if you’re not planning to drink any of them?

Open them?!?!?

[Soren_R_Nielsen]

@Phil David

Good grief. This seems much more about collector-fetishisation than actual wine.

Surely the most obvious thing to do with a suspect bottle is open it. What’s the point of having all these old wines if you’re not planning to drink any of them?

Hmm. I only see questions about very old wine, and their capsules. -And some good answers too.

No suspect bottles, that needs to be drunk. All still fine I presume.
No talk about “all these old wines”, actually “only a few” was ever mentioned by OP.
No one said they would never be drunk, just that they should be cellared even further.

[Chuck_Miller]

@Phil David

Good grief. This seems much more about collector-fetishisation than actual wine.

Surely the most obvious thing to do with a suspect bottle is open it. What’s the point of having all these old wines if you’re not planning to drink any of them?

+1,000,000. Find the right occasion, or any occasion, and drink the damn bottle.

[Soren_R_Nielsen]

Sorry, but I will keep collecting oldies, and only drink some when time feels right. (Plenty of younger good stuff, for any occasions.)
Chuck, I’m a little confused. I thought You operated a wine storage, and would encourage collectors to hoard along, keeping stashes for years and years.

[b_castner]

Reservoir tips

[Chuck_Miller]

@Soren R Nielsen

Chuck, I’m a little confused. I thought You operated a wine storage, and would encourage collectors to hoard along, keeping stashes for years and years.

I encourage clents to age their wines until mature, not dead. Wine is meant to be consumed. 30-40-50 years, I get. A 90 year old bottle with a suspect cork, drink the damn thing.

Besides, while there a plenty of older wines in my facility, the percentage of wines older than 50 years is a tiny fraction of any recent vintage. I make a lot more money on people buying a cellaring (multiple) cases of young wine than I ever will storing old bottles.

[Eric_Egan]

@Chuck Miller

@Soren R Nielsen

Chuck, I’m a little confused. I thought You operated a wine storage, and would encourage collectors to hoard along, keeping stashes for years and years.

I encourage clents to age their wines until mature, not dead. Wine is meant to be consumed. 30-40-50 years, I get. A 90 year old bottle with a suspect cork, drink the damn thing.

I wonder if not every 90 year old cork might be a little suspect - at least I am always going to be wary of their integrity. That’s why I like to reinforce the seal wherever possible, and am interested in how others go about doing this. Most 90+ y.o. capsules are going to be imperfect so that’s just part of the game - it doesn’t mean the bottles need to be drunk, but they can certainly do with extra reinforcement. There are a lot of bottles of this age (including the '26 VCC in the picture) that still have a long and satisfying life ahead of them. In fact there are some (including the Margaux '28) for which the producers recommend further cellaring.

To me, the most enjoyable experience as a wine drinker is open a bottle from a different age, one that has been around for a very long time, that I have kept for many years and looked forward to opening, imagining what it might taste like…

[Frank_Drew]

If Eric wants to keep a few bottles for a very long time, as an experiment or for whatever reason, he probably doesn’t need some internet scolds telling him he’s foolish to indulge his hobby. He’s not trying to convert anyone else to extreme aging of their wines, it’s just something he wants to do.

[Eric_Ifune]

Wax, at least those used as capsules, are oxygen permeable. If you are worried about the oxygen seal, you need to recork.

[Dennis_Kanagie]

@Frank Drew

If Eric wants to keep a few bottles for a very long time, as an experiment or for whatever reason, he probably doesn’t need some internet scolds telling him he’s foolish to indulge his hobby. He’s not trying to convert anyone else to extreme aging of their wines, it’s just something he wants to do.

Au contraire - this is the internet and this is how things are on virtually all discusson forums regardless of which hobby is the focus. If a person can’t handle opposing opinions and criticism (sometimes extreme) then they should either grow thicker skin or don’t post / log off. Unless you can successfully do a Rodney King to the www, nothing is going to change. Believe me, it’s been tried here by several members, both n00bs and veterans.

[Eric_Egan]

Heheh, amusing how this seemingly innocuous question seems to bring up such differnet reactions in people. A 90 year old bottle with a naturally weakened cork will of course last for another decade or two in the right conditions - just want to make sure I give it as good a chance as possible; keeping the oxygen out and allowing it to evolve at a handsome snails pace.

Don’t think I’m going to opt for wax, given its fragility. Perhaps the paper/foil/elastic solution is still the best in lieu of any better suggestions.

On a different note: I hadly think keeping a wine made for perpetuity for a hundred years or more is extreme, just because the pop-and-pour culture of modern wine making doesn’t cater for long-tem development and finesse. There are still enough bottles around from earlier (I would argue better) times that need (or at least can benefit from) 50+ years in the bottle. Sadly that’s no longer the norm in a culture that aims to whittle things down to bit-sized chunks for immeditate cognitive (or otherwise) consumption…

[Frank_Drew]

@Dennis Kanagie

Au contraire - this is the internet and this is how things are on virtually all discusson forums regardless of which hobby is the focus. If a person can’t handle opposing opinions and criticism (sometimes extreme) then they should either grow thicker skin or don’t post / log off.

Eric has given no indication that he can’t handle opposing opinions and needs to grow a thicker skin; sometimes, though, it’s the internet killjoys who need to zip it. And that’s my opposing opinion which it seems you can’t handle.

[Dennis_Kanagie]

Frank, I never said Eric can’t handle the stuff being tossed around in this thread. Actually, he seems to be handling it quite well. My post was a general statement. So back atcha.

[John_Morris]

@Eric Egan

I’ve got a few old bottles of Bordeaux and Burgundy with corroded/deteriorated/torn capsules and was wondering how other people out there cared for bottles in this condition.

Basically, I used to just wrap cling film around the next of bottles where the capsules showed signs of weakness, either through corrosion or holes. I know some whiskey collectors that do this to prevent any evaporation from their bottles. However, I became (perhaps unnecessarily) concerned about the chemicals in the film coming into contact with the wine (through a closed loop between the headspace/wine/cling film).

Now I wrap a small sheet of grease proof paper tightly around the capsule, cover this in cling film, and wrap a small elastic band tightly around this to seal it just below the lower lip of the finish. I keep the bottles horizontally in a wine cabinet at about 5° C (I always keep wines that I want to evolve very slowly at this temperature).

Does anyone have any thoughts on this, or perhaps you take a different approach?

A couple of random thoughts…

The corrosion may very well be due to cellar humidity or moisture under the capsule when it was put on the bottle (which was likely after the bottles had sat unlabeled and uncapsuled in a moist cellar). In those cases, seepage through the cork may not be to blame, and wrapping the capsule might not arrest the corrosion. Indeed, it might seal in moisture that would encourage further corrosion.

At 5C, I’d expect any oxidation from a poor cork to be extremely slow.

Combining those two thoughts, I’m not sure I’d worry that you need to protect wine with corroded corks.

As for the impact of the plastic wrap, I wouldn’t worry. It doesn’t seem to affect the flavors of foods. Moreover, many people think that non-stretchable plastic wrap like Saran can neutralize TCA, so there might be collateral benefits.

[M.Kaplan]

Parafilm. Evaporation is a problem with screw-cap whisky bottles, so I use Parafilm to create a tight seal.

https://www.amazon.com/Parafilm-M-all-purpose-laboratory-film/dp/B006RAXTFU

[Chris_Seiber]

The idea of harmful chemicals evaporating into a wine bottle from cling wrap being wrapped around the bottle is one of the most … far fetched things I’ve ever heard. Is that real, or am I misunderstanding it?

[Eric_Egan]

Cling film pollution question is perhaps a bit far-fetched, I agree. Thought there was a thread here a while back that refereed to an article on the affects of plastic wrap on neutralising TCA; apparently there were chemicals in the plastic that also had a strong deleterious effect on certain aroma markers in the wine, neutralising them after even a short period of contact. Perhaps a bit far fetched to imagine that happening through the cork but over a ten year time-frame, who knows… In any case it doesn’t hurt to place a layer of something definitively harmless on the inside.

John: very good point about the reasons behind corrosion. Perhaps it’s down to other factors than cork weakness. It may be that there was moisture under the capsule, or that it collected there over time through a small nick or scratch somewhere. This is perhaps also why we sometimes find hints of mould/odd things growing behind the capsule as well, without it necessarily reflecting cork failure.

Mark: thanks for the link. Though the website states that the film is gas permeable - wouldn’t that mean that oxygen could get through it? Presumably it would mean that larger molecules constructed from the vapour inside would not pass out which makes it suitable for whiskey, but would it prevent oxygen from getting in?

[KatrinaBI]

@Eric Egan

For illustration purposes:

Looks just like my mother’s batches of rhubarb jam and gooseberry jam, many decades ago. Sealed with a disc of greaseproof paper and then clingfilm with a rubber band.

I’ll probably get my AWG credentials revoked for this (apprentice wine geek) but I would never do this, sheerly for aesthetic reasons. I don’t want my wine cellar looking like a cupboard full of home-made jellies. (Plus, they all got mold on them after about a year anyway and were tossed out in an annual cupboard cleaning.)