Phony cork question

I ran out of natural corks to bottle my home made wines and the press house I bought some juice from only had synthetic ones, so I bought a bag and decided to give them a try. The first batch I bottled, a red, I simply removed them from the bag and inserted them. I then immediatly laid half of the bottles on their side in a bin and several started to drip. I figured it must be pressure from the piston effect of inserting them, so I stood them all upright, thinking the air will leak out and the pressure will be equalized. They've been standing up since Saturday. I then thought that maybe warming the corks up might help, so I then bottled a batch of Riesling and soaked them in hot water for about 10 minutes before inserting. I have left these upright on the cellar floor since yesterday afternoon. Is there a recommended technique for inserting them? How soon before I should lay them down?

Hmmm. We've used synthetics on a lot of our wines and have never had a problem with leakage. We soak them in water with some sulfite in it before corking, but it's just room temp.

Mike

Hi Howie,
Interesting point Howie. After viewing several synthetic cork manufactures’ websites I noticed that they have only one diameter size 22mm (.866). Natural cork comes in two different diameters #8 (.875) and #9 (.937). I guess most home winemakers who recycle old commercial wine bottles have figured out that sometimes it is almost impossible (or it takes a great deal of effort) to get a #9 cork into some of those older thicker European wine bottles.

The following website states that bottle of wines sealed with their product can be stored neck up or neck down immediately after bottling.

http://www.corktek.com/02-synthetic-cor ... torage.php

Salute

After receiving bottles from for many years, I've noticed that all the bottles that take a #8 cork come from Italy. #9s work in bottles from France, US, Canada, Australia, etc. The dripping stopped and from now on when using these I'll simply leave them upright for a day or so. Thanks for the link. Those look like the ones I bought, but I just ordered 1,000 regular corks, which should arrive shortly.