WTN: ZD Chard Calif '86...(short/boring)

Tried last night:
1. ZD Chard Calif (13.8%) Norman&Robert DeLeuze/Napa 1986: Med.gold color w/ no browning; strong toasty/smokey/oak some herbal/melony/Chard bit earthy/dusty quite interesting complex nose that speaks strongly of young Chard; fairly tart strong charred/smokey/toasty/oak rather herbal/thyme//melony/Chard/spicy some complex flavor; long quite tart bit austere strong smokey/toasty/oak quite spicy/thyme/herbal/melony/Chard/appley bit lean finish; no signs of oxidation & lots of oak and rather herbal/melony austere Chard; amazingly fresh & alive. $17.50
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And a wee BloodyPulpit:
1. I, of course, followed ZD from the very start, and before. First met GinoZepponi over at DarrellCorti's before or about when ZD was just getting off the ground. Did a visit there at their wnry in Vineburg w/ Gino way back when. Gino was an aerospace engineer over in Sac and also owned a small Chard vnyd there in Vineburg. The early Chards were rather lean/austere/Chablis-like Chards a bit like DaveBennion's early ones. They also went down, very early on, to buy Chard & Pinot out of TepesquetVnyd in SantaBarbara/SantaMaria. Gino was a very likable Italian guy, very gregarious.
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2. This wine was another from my stash of poorly stored wines I found in my garage; there for some 15-18 yrs. This case had 6 different Chards therein. The first 5 went down the drain as way over the hill. When I poured this one into the glass, I could tell it had a chance of still being alive. Annd alive it certainly was, showing zero signs of oxidation or dreadful storage.
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3. Corks: All of these wines I've been ripping thru have been stored standing upright, w/ the cork not in contact w/ the wine. Because the corks can be pretty tight, I use the Ah-So remover to remove the cork. The Ah-So can be a bit tricky because if the cork has dried out & shrunk, it can easily punch the cork down into the wine. What's amazed me, thus far, is that most of the corks have been sound and fairly moist, especially on the inside end. Not punched one down into the wine yet (though a few have started to slide downward).
Yet we are told by wine authorities that a wine must be stored on its side to keep the cork moist. This isn't jiving w/ my experience here w/ this batch of wines. What the heck gives?? Surely...but Shirley....the authorities cannot be wrong? Can they??
Tom

"Authorities" often spend most of their lives agreeing with each other.
If the seal is reasonably good, the headspace should be about 100% humidity of both water and alcohol. And with "warm storage" <another evil g>, the amount of vapor in the headspace will be larger.
I'm an engineer, not a chemist or a physicist, but I think what you see is what I'd expect.
I've had crumbling corks and loose corks, but I don't recall seeing one that was actually dry.
You, of course, have vastly more experience of corks than I do, Tom!

"Authorities" often spend most of their lives agreeing with each other.

Yup, John....eggsactly.
I remember when I started teaching my wine appreciation classes (back in 1970), I used to repeat all the
"common knowledge" faithfully because I "knew" it to be the case. But now that I am no longer an "authority",
I no longer do that.
Tom

Remember that the headspace is saturated with the partial pressures of constituents of the liquid, and the greatest proportioned constituent in the liquid is water, so even in an upright bottle, water will be getting to the cork to moisten it. It becomes a competition, moistening taking place on one end of the cork, drying taking place at the other end. It is therefore never a given that wine stored for even a year or two will have a cork compromised to the point of destructive oxidation of the wine inside. However, your stash is in better condition than can reasonably be hoped for, even by an optimist.