Any reason not to replace a leaky cork on say, an older bottle of port? I have a corker as part of my home vinting operation. Can buy quality corks down the street. I don’t intend to sell the wine. I have read that this is done along with topping up on high end Bordeaux.
Was looking at an auction lot where the description was “1970 Vintage Port corroded capsules, signs of old seepage, heavily bin-soiled labels”
On the winery web page this
“After thirty five years of ageing, these
wines are currently in perfect balance
but they will continue to age gracefully
for many years to come.”
No reason not to. I would chill the bottle first. Though it isn’t much discussed, recorking is often accompanied by an SO2 addition. You could probably skip that step for your bottle of Port.
If the old corks come out cleanly ( I have one of those bladed removers that seems to work well most of the time) it should take less than a minute to get a new cork inserted. If the old cork does not cooperate then there may be other things to consider such as whether to decant and rebottle and perhaps top off with one of the other bottles in the case.
Yup. Temperature influences the molecular collision rate and speeds up the process. You might be okay with such a narrow surface area like the neck of a bottle, but older wines tend to be more fragile (even in the case of Port). Personally, I’d feel better about taking that simple step even if it seems overly precautious.
Don’t know how it balances out, but water (and wine?) absorbs oxygen much better at lower temperatures! So maybe it is best to just recork fairly quickly… but even 10 minutes or more shouldn’t matter.
I recorked quite a few older Bordeaux some years back. I topped up with as similar a wine as I had available. The wines weren’t that valuable then, and now, as I can’t resell them, I am forced to drink them someday! Two bottles of '82 Lafite and one '82 Mouton among them!
Chilling it could cause tartaric acid to precipitate out and change the wine.
I’d just drink it myself, having had more bad experiences than good by extended cellaring. If you insist on sitting on it, recorking seems benign outside of the risk of introducing TCA.
If you chill the bottle, shouldn’t you also chill the new cork that are going to use in the recorking process? This would be more for the ever so slight contraction you would have in the bottle and the cork.
In commercial operations, you compress the cork anyway. It takes a while to spring back to size, so you don’t put the wine on the side right away, although I’ve seen that too. Then, years later, someone opens the bottle and sees some wine up the side of the cork and they’re convinced that the bottle was heated at some point.
But cooling the cork wouldn’t really accomplish anything. Cork is mostly air. It’s not going to freeze or cool that much.
In wine oxygen is absorbed over three times faster at 30 degrees C than at 10. Probably no more than 2 mg/liter at room temp during the course of the day at room temperature, but the principle is sound. Again, probably over-cautious on my end.
Penfolds offers a topping-off and re-corking service for its high-end wines for those that have registered their bottles; they even take it on the road. Before they top-off and re-cork they verify that the wine is sound. IIRC they were in the DC area a few years ago doing this.
So, re-corking is “standard practice” for at least some houses…
Alan, not sure if your question was directed at me but AFAIK Penfolds does not use a Nitrogen Chamber, IIRC the pictures I saw were in a room and they were using other Penfolds wines that they (Penfolds) brought to top off the client’s wines.
The Penfolds Re-corking Clinics offer the owners of Penfolds red wines which are 15 years and older the opportunity to have their wines assessed by a winemaker, and if necessary, opened, tasted, topped up and re-capsuled on the spot.
Watch the video on that site I linked to above - very interesting! The Penfolds winemaker tastes the client’s wine and then discusses where that bottle is at in its evolution both in absolute terms and relative to the vintage and then certifies the bottle as an exemplar of the wine for the vintage before topping off and re-corking. Bit of a WOW for me…
Better question. Why would you buy a leaker at auction, or elsewhere for the matter? Unless it’s super cheap and it’s a drink now type purchase, find a better stored bottle.
