I have an old bottle of Burgundy with a plastic capsule on it. Has anyone ever seen this before ? Possible explanations ? Yeah I know. Let me start. Rudy ? haha.
Is this a hard capsule type plastic? If so very common on Ports from the early 60’s to early 70’s. A royal pain to remove. But use a razor and cut two parallel vertical lines about 1" apart. Then pop off the capsule.
Louis Martini used them (even back in the '60s, I believe). They had a little pull tab to unzip the top.
Also some of the Diamond Creeks of the 1970’s used plastic capsules.
Thisi is from the 40’s.
I have a bunch of these from 1967 and 1964. Hard plastic, now drying out and splitting (and falling off):
(pic from Cellartracker)
That’s a surprise!
You have a bunch of '64 and '67 SIZZANO??? How are they holding up? I recently had a late 50’s Inferno that was stunning…
The Sizzano is 1964, Spanna from the same producer is 1967. I have enjoyed both but of the bottles I have so far had the 1967 is more enjoyable.
It probably helps that I really like mature red wines, I am just thrilled to find that simple straightforward nebbiolo can be so fresh and healthy after almost 50 years.
Here is one of my notes:
- 1967 Fratelli Berteletti Spanna - Italy, Piedmont (11/11/2013)
We have now had 2 bottles of this wine. As far as I can determine, Bertiletti was a sort of negotient, and as Spanna is a local name for nebbiolo, this wine would include perhaps 20-30 percent other varieties, and be sourced from ‘near’ Gattinara. The bottles are labeled as ex an European cellar, which makes sense, given the above likely this wine only fetched a couple of dollars on release.
So, this is no sort of aristocrat, rather an everyday wine bottled for local consumption. Both bottles opened with the mature elements of the grape, some leather and aged tannins, but after an hour or so developed a notably flowery aroma, and considerable sweet and remarkably fresh, dark fruit. It was an exceptional pleasure to enjoy this wine with mushroom risotto, and then with an aged sirloin, really a beautifully balanced and developed wine from such humble origins. Not any kind of blockbuster, just a rare affordable opportunity to sample an accomplished but unpretentious wine. (92 pts.)
and pics showing the capsules:
Did that stuff come out of Chambers Street’s recent offer of such? The Inferno I had was sent to me by Jamie from there.
indeedee
So the question I have is why the plastic capsule ?
There’s always some huckster selling something that will A) save you money, B) work better and C) differentiate your brand?
Or else they had caught on to the lead oxide problem.
P Hickner
Not helpful, but I’ve seen many bottles from the 1970’s and early 80’s that had those plastic capsules - there was obviously a vendor pushing them on wineries in that era.
Maybe this had an effect?
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