My 10 Year Screw Cap Experiment ends

Ten years ago the viability of screwcaps for aging wine was a hot topic.

Most of the screwcapped wines available to me then were not meant for keeping, then my local wines shop brought in the most expensive wine I’d yet seen in screwcap, Wolf Blass Gold Label Barossa Shiraz 2001 and I thought I’d buy a couple of bottles and stick them away to test if they would age.

Well, I opened one in March 2012 and the last on Friday. Inside of the bottle was stained with sediment. The wine showed aged characteristics, the pepperyness toned down. Lovely mature restrained wine.

And not corked

[David M. Bueker]

Interesting. I have various screwcapped wines back to 2001, and have seen no ill effects so far.

I wouldn’t necessarily consider a twelve-year-old Australian Shiraz throwing some sediment or staining the glass an “ill effect”. Peter how was the appearance (color) of the wine?

Salute

[David M. Bueker]

I don't think be was implying that it was an ill effect.

Sounds successful, I hope others are paying attention.

The screwier the better, IMO.

Pity you did not have the same wine with a cork so you could compare.

Sediment isn't a fault - it's a sign the wine is maturing/has matured. One argument back than was wine couldn't mature under a screwcap. It does, it did.

The wine was bricking a little.

The wine was only available in screwcaps, but my experiment was to see if the wine would age, not to compare it with the same wine under cork, interesting tho' that would be.

The attitudes today towards screwcaps is a lot different to 10 years ago and there are many more wines on the market closed with screwcaps.

I was surprised in my trip last/this month to Missouri that 60% of Missouri wines are closed with screwcaps and consumers are happy to pay (what to me seemed) a lot for wines so closed. I was told that the majority of the customers liked them because they were easy to open (etc, etc), the only adverse comments coming from some older people.

Thanks for the info. I have quite a few whites aging under screwcap, but very few red (availability issue). I also am not especially sensitive to reduction issues. I've only had one white that seemed truly flawed by reduction.

Thanks Peter! If you can could you give us TN of this wine and the wine drank more than a year ago (back in March 2012) side by side. Thanks again!

Salute

The wine last year was good and I thought I shouldn't keep the other bottle longer than the 10 years, i.e. have it this year. Brief note in first post.

Basically when the Screw cap initiative began only two types of liners were available (one which provided almost no oxygen ingress and another that allowed a “controlled’ about of oxygen ingress). They found out fairly quickly that one was best suited for certain styles of wines and the other for other styles of wines. Because of the research done by screw cap and alternative enclosure manufacturers we have gained some insight of what is happening as a wine bottle ages (researchers still don’t fully understand). Today there is a much wider selection of different types of liners available giving winemakers more of a choice. We do know that a small amount of oxygen ingress during bottle aging can be ‘beneficial’ for some wines. But the question now becomes is a ‘fixed and controlled’ amount of oxygen ingress better suited?

I’m not sure what liners were used for the 2001 Wolf Blass Gold Label Shiraz wine, but I’ll give you a lot of credit going “far and beyond” the producers’ drinking window of four to six years.

Salute