Why aren’t:
- 750s filled higher in the neck
- 750s filled with narrower necks/less headspace
- 750s preferred to be in Diam (or even screw cap) to reduce the oxygen interaction?
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Honestly I think wine probably should have screw caps at this point. I think it’s probably because people just love corks. They could at least go to a cork material that is more reliable I would think, but I’m not sure. I would assume it’s because it has always been don’t that way. I need to do a search for info regarding the difference between corks, screw caps, or “synthetics corks or non-cork corks. It would be interesting to see the difference over a long period or small changes in weather.
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Honestly I think it’s the exact opposite. Recently we had a Riesling tasting of wines all around the world, and even if our guesses were all over the place, we could easily identify wines closed with screw caps. And it was not because the wines would’ve been better.
I think it’s perfectly ok to close inexpensive, easy-drinking wines that are meant to be drunk young with a screwcap. However, even if some wines bottled under a screwcap have aged quite gracefully, I really don’t like the results with an aged wine closed with a screwcap.
Unless one likes a wine kept in a time capsule.
I people are worried about TCA or premox, I wish they would switch to DIAM.
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Agree with Otto,
wines under SC often are showing much younger (so why age them?) and with pronounced acidity, lacking harmony and fullness.
SC are perfect for easy young wines, Gutsriesling, Beaujolais nouveau, Steinfeder, Trollinger -
but not for aging for 5+++ years
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Overfilling / less headspace results in bottles that leak from minor changed in temperature. It was, however, the Burgundian tradition to “overfill”, and some producers such as especially Leroy still do. That is why you get so many Leroy/d’Auvenay bottles with signs of seepage after transport.
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That’s interesting. I wonder what it is about the cork that makes the wines so different in taste and aging potential. Does anyone have information on why this would occur? Maybe it has to do with the material used and how it interacts with the wine.
I personally haven’t had a tasting with enough screw cap vs cork to have noticed a difference and since most of the screw cap wines I have had are cheaper/younger I haven’t had the chance to test this. But having you and Paul both have a similar experience shows there must be something to it.
It would be super interesting to bottle the same exact wine in two bottles, one with screw cap and one with cork and then blind taste them a couple of years down the road to see the difference. This may have already been done. I do think it would have to be blind to be fair but that would be a really interesting experiment. At least to me 
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Do the Leroy wines age differently than other producers?
Also a plus for corks: coravin-ability!
Never liked these things
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What about the newer screw caps that are designed to allow O2 transfer? Apparently the producer can even choose the rate of transfer, similar to choosing between DIAM 10 and 30, as an example.
FIFY 
Two years is nothing.
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I think the only reason we’re still using ridiculous corks is because screw caps look cheap. Same with whiskey. There is almost zero advantage to choosing cork closure over screw caps.
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It has been done.
At some point Laroche started to bottle even their higher-end wines under a screwcap. I attended one Laroche tasting where they poured three different pairs of wines blind and all we knew they were the same wine bottled under a natural cork and a screwcap. Can’t remember which wines they were, but probably something like a young 1er Cru, a 1er Cru with approx. 5 years and a Grand Cru with a bit more age.
Everybody always identified correctly which one was under a natural cork and which one was under a screwcap, although the young wines were quite identical.
Although the wines bottled under a screwcap were undeniably younger, a majority of attendees (me included) always preferred the versions under a natural cork. Especially the older GC under a natural corked showed lovely sense of evolution and complexity, whereas the screwcapped one felt younger than the younger 1er Cru under a natural cork. The consensus seemed to be that screwcap is great if you want to drink the wines over the years so that they more or less always taste the same - or if you want to age them for many decades. However, most of us preferred to age wines so that they develop some tertiary qualities and for that purpose natural cork seems to be a much better solution.
Laroche seemed to be very happy about their change to screwcaps back then, but relatively few in the tasting seemed to share the enthusiasm.
I’m not sure, but IIRC Laroche might’ve reverted back to natural corks since.
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I think you may be missing the main reason magnums supposedly age “better” than 750s: there’s twice the volume of wine, but the same cork. Whatever permeability the cork has, a magnum will take longer to see the effects. Another factor is the glass surface area. I don’t know if that surface contributes in any way to the chemical reactions that drive the aging process, but there is a lower surface/volume ratio in a larger volume bottle.
In a properly filled bottle (i.e., either vacuumed, or nitrogen sparged before filling) I don’t think head space makes much if any difference in aging.
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That’s kind where I landed too. I figured it was more of a resistance to change than anything else. However, I was wrong once before so it’s possible it could happen again.
I remember the discussions how first wines under the DIAM “did not age at all” or very slowly etc. Similarly it takes a learning to set the screwcaps to perform better that what was connemted here. Will they be better who knows
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This is the exact thing that I thought would be an interesting experiment. That is so cool that people could tell the difference. There must be something to it. Maybe corks are just porous enough to let just enough air in to make the difference. Someone more learned than I could explain it to me I’m sure. I would love to try that myself sometime. Thanks for sharing.
Otto,
Interesting comments. How long in bottle were the Rieslings you had under screw cap? What about under cork? And did you have any wines that were bottled under both to compare?
I do find wines under screw cap do develop slower but still develop- and the wines still have evolve and develop ‘harmony’. . .
One interesting aside - with a lot of ‘modern winemaking techniques these days aimed at getting a wines to market faster or making wines ‘more approachable’, one wonders if these wines will ‘evolve’ over time or just stay the same - regardless of cluosure.
Cheers
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Aren’t screwcaps purposely designed to provide specific, and selectable air transmission? Unless there is some interaction with the surface of the cork that contributes to the aging process, why should a well designed and selected screwcap be different from a good quality cork?
I can only relate my own experience drinking Austrian wines, some of which are closed with screwcap. I haven’t done the more comprehensive side by side you and your group has done, but I’ve never been disappointed with a screwcap bottle, many of which have had a decent amount of age. I would be very pleased to have every wine I own sealed under screwcap (and in a simple Bordeaux shaped bottle lol).
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Yep - and all of mine are in simple claret shaped bottles other than my Pinots . . .
Cheers
Seems the Germans favor the same. Perfectly sound bottles resting in the cellar with a sticky vein or two of wine running from underneath the capsule to the bottom of the bottle.
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