|
By Manos Angelakis
Tales of the Cork I.
During my recent Wines of Germany sponsored trip to premium quality wineries in Riesling-country (Rheingau, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Rheinhessen), the question of bottle-closure came to the forefront while discussing current vintages and future plans with winery owners and vintners.
Item: Wine production is increasing every year in every producing country, as demand for wine from consuming countries increases.
Item: Quality cork is becoming less available and more expensive.
Item: It takes almost 10 years after cork harvest, for a tree to create the minimum necessary thickness of cork. Many Portuguese cork farmers are not waiting and harvest in 7 to 8 years, creating short corks.
 Winemakers have been wrestling with the question. Do they continue with cork closures, even as low quality and short cork lengths become more prevalent; do they transition to synthetic corks, that up-to-now have not remained chemically neutral for more than a year; do they use screw-top closures, in the past the purview of low quality wines; do they use crown closures, as some Italian producers are doing for their mid-priced product; or do they use glass closures that can sometime chip, leaving glass-shards in the bottle.
Deciding what to do, means having to re-design bottles, re-tool filling lines for the appropriate type of closure and, in general, a considerable increase to the bottling costs. Doing nothing can spell disaster, as a producer I spoke with found out last season, when defective cork caused the loss of over 2500 cases of a 2003 Kabinett bottling.
Most wineries are presently testing different closure products trying to develop a lasting and cost-effective solution acceptable to their customers.
Some, mostly the larger producers, can still get quality cork by placing large orders and cultivating established relationships; but the writing is already on the wall. Others have already made a decision and are converting to a Stelvin® or Stelvin+® closure; a screw-type aluminum capsule with a long skirt that, as far as I can see, creates a better closure than cork, preserving for a longer time the freshness and aroma of the wine without fear of TCA contamination from bad cork (corking) or leaching of undesirable chemicals into the wine. The Stelvin® closure is used now mostly for alcoholic beverages.
For many of the smaller, quality wine producers, the economics are formidable. Wine, especially in their internal market, is extremely price-sensitive. Compared to 1995 when 58.6% of the German market was consuming German wine, in 2003 only 46.6% of the internal market was consuming German product, even though the average per-capita consumption has increased from 22.8 lit. in ‘95 to 24.4 lit. in ‘03 This decline has been mainly due to increased price pressure from imports.
It has been reported that sommeliers from prestigious US restaurants are resisting the conversion trend as they fear that their tips will evaporate if customers do not hear the pop of a cork, and the sommelier or wine steward does not offer the cork with a theatrical flourish. The question is, how many bad bottles will a starred restaurant be willing to have returned?
À votre santé.
© September 2005 The Oenophile Blog. All rights reserved.
Tales of the Cork II
Many of the winemakers I meet, look at their wines as art they create to please their audience; to others, the wines are their children – they speak of young wines as being “in diapers”. It is therefore not unreasonable to consider that the ultimate fate of their product, not really whether the wines will sell, but if they will please the aficionados that partake of them, is of utmost importance to these producers.
During many of the recent tastings I participated, the cork vs. other closure subject come up time after time. It was a really “hot” subject at the recent Wines of Chile tasting, where numerous Chilean winemakers who came up to New York for the show, seemed to have read my and other articles on closures and kept asking me, as if I was an authority on the subject, what my opinion is about bottle closures. In the major three German and Austrian wines importer tastings that took place during February and March 2006, the closure subject was also a “hot” topic. And on a final note, a major California producer, Domaine Chandon, announced that it is releasing its premium Carneros Chardonnay with a screw cap closure (Stelvin™).
As far as I have been able to deduce, the German wine industry is moving en mass away from cork. I saw more high quality bottles from famous vineyards with Stelvin™ and glass stoppers than I have ever seen before. These owners/vintners believe that wines that are to be drunk fairly young, within five years from bottling, and are highly aromatic and off-dry to medium sweet – such as Rieslings of the Rhine valleys – benefit from the hermetic closure of Stelvin™ or Stelvin™+ that keeps the wine’s freshness and aroma unaltered. To many the development of a particular vintage is also a factor; for example, many of the 2003 and 2005 wines that are still developing in-bottle benefit from cork closures that allow some micro-oxidation to occur. The 2004 vintage that for many producers is as close to optimal as possible needs the practically airtight Stelvin™ closure to stop any further changes and keep the wine’s characteristics “frozen” to the point of bottling. So, some are running double bottle filling lines bottling some of their production with cork and some with Stelvin™, Stelvin™+, or, more rarely, glass stoppers.
The Austrians are still experimenting and a number have opted for glass-stopper closures. The Italians are experimenting with steel crown closures (beer-bottle type closures) for many of their white and sparkling wines. The Greek wine industry is also experimenting, but with synthetic bottle closures.
Of course, these trends are of major importance to the Portuguese cork industry, which is becoming increasingly alarmed about the vintner’s defections away from cork. Therefore, the Portuguese Cork Association (APCOR) commissioned a major Napa-based public relations agency to do market research on the cork vs. other closure subject. The report’s conclusions have been that “US consumers give cork the seal of approval; Nine out of ten customers think non-cork closures cheapen wine, survey says”.
I am afraid that it is the wrong audience that has been surveyed. It is not the consumers or the sommeliers that decide what closures are used, it is the wine makers. Most consumers are not educated enough about the benefit or lack-of, of the type of closure used for the wines they drink. According to respondents to the survey, “the bulk of consumers (69%) preferred cork as a wine closure because of its tradition”. An educational campaign on the part of the winemakers using non-cork closures can easily reverse that consumer perception.
To your health!
© March 2006 The Oenophile Blog. All rights reserved.
Dear Managing Editor,
We write in response to your most recent story on cork. At this early stage in the evolution of screw caps as wine closures there is really still not enough research to support either side of the closure debate --this is a source of frustration for all involved. While screw caps have their advocates, as do natural corks, each side also has its issues to resolve. With that in mind, there is some evidence that this issue is a lot cloudier than perhaps you believe.
Of course we all know that wines develop with age under cork - but they do not do this the same way under screw cap. In fact New Zealand winemaker Alan Limmer has written in a host of wine industry journals (including Practical Winery and Vineyard in the U.S.) about testing aged screwcap wines. He found they had a distinct rotten egg quality from the development of H2S in the bottle. This does not seem to be related only to the use of SO2 at bottling, but to the screw cap itself. The literature on the effect that screwcaps have on aging wine is sparse, but already early evidence is not showing completely positive results. To report anything else would be ignoring the research.
It is important to note that the top French chateaux, along with virtually every top winery in the USA, continually study these issues and still bottle with Natural Corks, from DRC to Lafite Rothschild.
And it is important to note that cork companies have made tremendous progress of late. The Portuguese cork industry has recently spent millions of dollars to improve cork quality. Top wineries are now reporting very low incidences of TCA. This is a direct result of major changes by the cork industry, and the future is even brighter, with results showing well below the 1.5% level.
At the same time, the appeal of natural cork is undeniable. The vast majority of wine consumers, even those who read such publications as the Wine Spectator, trust it especially for high end wine by a wide margin.
Sincerely,
Paul Wagner
Balzac Communications
Per Elisa Pedro
APCOR
Portuguese Cork Producers
The above letter not withstanding, more producers are moving away from natural cork.
At the recent Les Vins Georges Duboef 2005 Beaujolais-Villages and Crus tasting, I noticed that all the whites presented and a number of the reds, had plastic closures that look like cork. I asked Franck Duboeuf, who is in charge of operations for the Duboef company, if his company is moving away from natural cork and his answer was emphatically affirmative. He said that in the last few years they had quality problems with their cork suppliers and the quality had not improved even after they changed suppliers. So the decision was made to move to plastic closures for the wines that are made for consumption within one or two years at the most from bottling, and try to acquire better cork for the reds that are supposed to be cellared. He also mentioned that if the cork quality does not improve, they will move to other closures for their entire line. The Duboef company is one of the largest exporters of French wines.
On Cork, and the Spanish Law
The new Spanish law designating by fiat that only cork can be used as closure in wines produced in 11 regions of the Catalan D.O. (Denominacion de Origine), is a real corker.
The D.O. seal on a bottle is supposed to be a guarantee of quality. A cork closing a bottle is no more a guarantee of quality than having gold lettering on the label.
The cork vs. other closures controversy has been going on for some time now.
There are both proponents and detractors of using cork as a modern wine bottle closure. But nobody, except for the cork producers, wants to have laws passed that compel the use of one kind or another kind of material. The consensus has been “Let the winemakers that know their wines best, make the decision what kind of closure they wish to utilize. For a government to decree by law that only one kind of closure is acceptable, it is really bad”.
I have a continuing dialog about the merits and demerits of a cork closure with a number of winemakers and producers. The results are mixed.
Genevieve Janssens, for example, the distinguished Director of Winemaking whom I met at the Robert Montavi Winery’s 40th Anniversary celebrations in New York City, believes in using only cork. She feels that, since cork allows a wine to develop in bottle over time, that is the right closure for her wines. She said that they are continually experimenting with different materials for use in their products, and have not found a closure better than cork.
On the other hand Johannes Leitz, a distinguished German Riesling producer, whose wines “evolve into the most noble examples of the Rheingau signature” believes that his wines require a screw-cap closure to retain the freshness and flavor, as it comes out of the winery.
And, Franck Duboeuf, in charge of operations for the Duboef company, one of the largest exporters of French wines, has already moved to plastic closures for the wines that are made for consumption within one or two years from bottling.
For APCOR, the consortium of Portuguese cork producers, to celebrate the Spanish edict is very premature. Catalonia is only a small wine producing area, very close to Portugal. It is the rest of the world that will be rendering the actual decision whether cork has outlived its usefulness or not.
© April 2006 LuxuryWeb Magazine. All rights reserved.
The story continues: A major Portuguese winery announced its intention to start selling its wines under Stelvin® screwcap closures instead of cork. Portugal is the world's largest producer of cork, and for Quinta do Cotto to go completely with screwcaps naturally raised issues of patriotism and national pride in that country. As always, however, it comes down to money. Reuters quoted owner Miguel Champalimaud, “Today a decent cork is more expensive than a liter of wine. We have become cork salesmen instead of wine sellers," which pretty much sums it all up.
On the antipodes, about half of Australia's recently harvested 2006 vintage will be sold with screwcaps or other manmade closures, and 85% of the 2006 New Zealand wines will be cork free, according to comments of the winemakers I met at the recent New Zealand wine tasting.
At the recent Loire Valley Road Show and the Wines of Provence Tasting, more than half of the exhibitors were using plastic or other man-made closures for their white and rosé wines.
© May 2006 LuxuryWeb Magazine. All rights reserved.
|
