Gaja 1997 and Mouton 1995
Well - yes - there is a significant difference in length, but what else?
This difference is - if at all - only valuable after 3, 4, 5 decades …
On the other hand my experience is that longer corks (5+ cm) have a significant higher corking rate that shorter ones … for whatever reason.
Ignore the overall length a look at the wine penetration depth. The Mouton barely nudges past the tip of the cork showing a good seal for the remainder of the cork, while the Gaja appears to have cork that is stained almost 2/3’s of the depth.
Yes, the Piemontese love their long corks.
I haven’t witnessed that myself (and I’ve experienced few corked Barolos), but someone once told me that it’s hard to get corks that are both very high grade and long.
Both wines have been in the same cellar since release. The Gaja, although longer appears to be made of an inferior quality cork. It has a lot of dents, cracks and bits missing out of it. Wine has seeped over half its length already. Although I think this wine will be very long lived I now have a concern that the remaining bottles will start leaking at some stage and bring a premature end to its life. Where else the Mouton cork looks to be better, it feels denser and hardly any seepage has occurred. At this price level I would hope that only BEST cork material would be used.
The length of a cork is determined by the bottle’s neck design. The quality of the cork can be irrespective of its length.
There is an urban legend that persists in the wine world that shorter corks are not as good in quality, that is not always the case.
+1 - what Andy said…
We buy from Lafitte and I think they actually have 4 levels of cork - but here’s a good general guide on cork quality
I was wondering about the same thing another day. We opened a bottle Scarecrow 05 along with a few other napa cabs.
It has a really short cork and it broke. But, the wine was the WOTY though…
The cork of the Mouton is fair in my opinion.
I do not like the Gaia cork.
Seems to be a too warm kept bottle to me.
It does look that way, but both wines have been stored ,in the same cellar , at 12 Degrees Celsius since they were released…seem like a crap cork to me.
Why don’t you blame the bottle instead? If you look very closely in the picture you’ll see where the cork indents near the bottom of where it says GAJA, then it flares back out (and above the Gaja as well). That’s also roughly where the seapage stops. Appears to be a classic poorly designed or manufacturing flaw in the inside neck of the bottle. That would cause the cork not to seal properly against the side of the glass. Or they ordered/got the wrong diameter corks. Either way if the cork doesn’t fit right in the neck of the bottle it won’t seal right. That’s not always the corks fault.
Fair call Andy. That thought had crossed my mind. I would have thought the getting the mold correct, not that I really know much about that, would be the easiest thing to get right but then there’s the injecting of the glass and I’m not sure how one would check the inside of the bottle for any variations.
If you’re really worried about the future of your Gaja bottles and you don’t own them as an investment, cut the capsules off and inspect the corks. I do this to all older bottles I buy because my only intention is to enjoy them.