Re: Gary, question.........[Long]
GaryG in MD
>Hi Ruth,
Your question is a good one, and Pascal’s answer was concise. Mine tend to go on and on. ;-) Whole books can be written about the tradeoffs associated with wine bottle closures for storage/aging. It was long believed that cork was the only way to go for really fine wines. Many still believe this, but it is being seriously challenged. Viva la difference. I can’t get into that argument here. Let me give you the information that you are really interested in – the subject of stoppers for use after a wine has been opened.
What happens to a wine after it has been opened is very complex and depends on the wine, it’s age, how it has been handled and stored before opening, how much is left in the bottle, where you then store it, how you close it, and many other factors. The enemy is oxygen. The bottom line is that most wines begin to deteriorate as soon as you open them, and the goal is to slow that. This is not necessarily true with truly fine, young wines, say the top 5%, or whatever. These wines may improve for a period of time after being opened. In a wine tasting with young, or even middle-aged wines, it is necessary to watch the wines evolve in the glass over a period of up to an hour or so. This will give you a rough idea of how that particular wine (unopened) may evolve in a wine cellar. Really young wines may even be purposely aerated by a rough decantation prior to serving to try to activate them (with oxygen).
After 99.9% of wines have been opened, and a reasonable amount poured out of the bottle, the primary goal to maintain quality in storage is to remove the oxygen from the bottle. There are several ways to do this. Some people use a pressurized can of inert, heavy gas (nitrogen, CO2, argon, or whatever) to squirt a shot of gas into the bottle to displace the oxygen prior to sealing. Others use specially designed rubber stoppers with a simple little hand pump called a Vacu-vin (readily available in grocery and wine stores). These approaches are very effective, if there is a reasonable amount of wine left in the bottle, and will slow deterioration and maintain reasonable wine quality for a day or two with relatively young wines. The quality of older wines will deteriorate quickly under any circumstances. (The terms “young” and “old” cannot be defined simply by calendar years because it depends strongly on the type, origin, style, and quality of the specific wine. Some 15-year old wines are “younger” than many 5-year old wines.)
So, Ruth, how does this affect you? A stopper with a natural or artificial cork closure should be avoided because they cannot be properly washed and disinfected. As we have seen, the very act of disinfecting can introduce TCA. The ones made with multiple deep flanges of plastic or rubber can be cleaned, but it is hard, and most people won’t. You were very wise to avoid these. The stainless steel cones with rubber O-rings, like your current design, are by far the best because they are easy to keep clean and because more people will have a tendency to keep them shiny and clean.
The good news is that most casual wine drinkers will drink part of a bottle, stick your stopper in the top, and finish it the next day with pleasure and without knowing the difference. A more serious wine lover, with a worthy bottle of wine, will buy a can of gas, squirt it in, and SEAL it with your stopper. That’s what the rubber O-rings are for. With luck, the wine may maintain reasonable quality for a day or two.
If you include an “owner’s manual” with your stoppers, I would recommend that you recommend that the users limit storage of table wines to a day or two. After that, they are bound to lose a lot of quality. (Ports and Sherries can last a bit longer.) You could also recommend NOT storing opened red wines in the frig. Not only is that climate bad for your wood, it will ruin the wine (and who wants to drink cold red wine?). I don’t even put my opened whites in the frig – it kills them.
Sorry to be so long-winded.
In vino veritas,
Gary
