Bill,
I know very well the cellar of Bourdy.
They recork their wines every 40 years, and it is part of their process to keep old wines available.
The same exists with the wonderful cellar of Bouchard Père & Fils.
The 1864 Montrachet Bouchard is my best ever white wine and this wine has had a new cork minimum 4 times, as Bouchard change corks every 40 years, filling the bottles with the same wine of the same year and making the sacrifice of one bottle at every operation of change of corks.
These operations made in the cellar of the Domaine with the best possible conditions are the best way to keep wines alive. Bourdy and Bouchard make it with the best possible process, and there is no travel as the operation is made in the cellar where the wine lies.
This is different from a wine which arrived in your cellar with previously how many owners, and which will travel to the domaine, and will travel again to your cellar.
My best ever Yquem is a 1861 Yquem which had its original cork. It was unbelievable, the cork was extremely tight but the top had remained with a sufficient volume to prevent the wine to evaporate. My belief is that the same 1861 which exists in the cellar of Yquem and which has had probably 5 changes of cork would be largely less impressive than my 1861.
Practically, when domaines recork they keep their wines in their cellar. An amateur who has old wines should never recork them.
Where the bottle travels to has no bearing on being recorked. That is just plain silly to think otherwise. So long as it’s done properly, where it’s done and to what doesn’t matter.
From various producers I’ve spoken to in Portugal it does take about a year or two for the wine to come back together after being recorked and one should not drink it during that period for best results.
Please, Msr Audouze, elaborate on your opposition to the professionally conducted Penfolds Grange Clinics.
I am against amateur re-corking efforts. I believe that the risks are simply too high for something to go wrong. However, Penfolds provides a service under the scrupulous eye of the winemaker (I believe) wherein it is in Penfolds’ best interests to not mess up their wines.
If the “Clinic” is a bad idea, I think that they would have cancelled performing public re-corking efforts years ago.
Only if you’d lend us one of your fancy micro pipetters. I used to work in a winery lab that had a decent set of pipetters, and we did add SO2 to some individual barrel samples once. That was fun figuring out how many microliters we needed of 6% solution for a 20 ppm addition to a bottle.
Edit: If I did the math right, you’d need 25 microliters of 6% SO2 for a 20ppm addition to a 750 ml bottle. Al, we need your help.
Drew,
Lafite used to do the same procedure, visiting the customers and recorking for their customers, in various countries.
I do not doubt that the people who change the corks make the operation with the most appropriate methods.
I mentioned Penfolds because I met the representative of Penfolds, but I have no specific complain against Penfolds. It was an example without pointing that Penfolds would work badly.
My opinion is based on what I have seen with recorked bottles compared with genuinely corked bottles. Like Gerhard I have noticed that recorked bottles have not the same taste as the original bottled.
In the case of Penfolds there are not very old bottles as Penfolds Grange does not exist before the fifties. And as the wine is powerful, it can stand operation of recorking, probably better than an old Bordeaux.
For Port wines, it is sure that the effect of recorking has less influence as alcoholic beverages are stronger than wines with 12°.
But I will continue to state that a recorked bottle has not a taste as brilliant as the one with an original cork.
That would be interesting to see what the Bourdy guys are doing, extra SO2 addition or maybe not. They could keep the SO2 level of the “topping” wine at a very high level so that it serves two purposes.