Nicked Screw Caps???

One of the problems early on w/ the increased usage of Stelvin screw caps that was identified was the tendency of the screw cap top to be nicked/dented during handling, resulting in loss of the seal and potential oxidation of the wine.
I've had a handful of screw-capped wines that I've observed nicks/dents on the lip of the screwcap. But I've not had a single btl that I thought was oxidized or compromised.
I had a Siduri that I dropped on the floor, putting a serious dent in the screwcap. When I opened it several days later...it seemed just fine.
Has anyone observed a screw-capped wine that was oxidized?
Tom

Nope. My failure rate is 0. The only thing I've seen is where the liner is under vacuum and remains stuck to the lip of the bottle, but that is only an aesthetic failure, and doesn't result in a problem with the wine. I have also dinged and dented my share of screwcaps, and never had so much as a drop leak out.

[Robin Garr]

I'm inclined to think the ding-and-dent thing is a non-issue, too. I sure don't see wine geeks fretting over the integrity of their screw cap the way we fret about natural cork.

Remember the hoo-hah about reductiveness under screwcap? Where did that ever go?

Now that I think about it, what about the hoo-hah about wines not aging under screwcap? They started coming in around the early '90s, if memory serves, so I expect there's a growing body of evidence about evolution under screwcap (although maybe not, since "cellarworthy" wines still rarely come with this closure). Does anyone know if there's been any serious research done on this, now that we're establishing a bit of a timeline for Stelvins?

[David M. Bueker]

I have had exactly two screw cap failures. Both were 8+ years ago.

I've had no issues with the screw caps, and Coffaro started using them in '02.

No issues for me.

I too have dropped a bottle that landed on the corner of a screw cap, but drank it very soon after. If it was sealed with a cork the result could have been a whole lot worse!

[Robin Garr]

I've had no issues with the screw caps, and Coffaro started using them in '02.

John, do you have any opinions based on tastings of the Coffaros over time? Have you cellared any to the point of observing a pattern of evolution in the bottle?

I avoid buying bottles with dents in screwcaps, but the only problem I've had with a screwcapped wine was because there was a chip missing in the glass neck of the bottle, i.e. a fault in the bottle not the closure and I returned the bottles for refund without any issues.

With a cork the sea is the length of the cork inside the bottle neck and is thus safe from damage by knocks, but a screwcap close has a small seal, just the very tip rim of the bottle and the closure is exposed to possible knocks and damage, but, as I say, touch wood, no probs so far.

Ref aging - there have been aging tests. My own experince is I kept an Australian shiraz for 10 years and I thought it had aged, it had thrown a deposit and showed maturity, but I didn't have the same wine in cork to compare. I no longer have any interest in aging wines for 10 years....

Robin, I have opinions about almost everything. And Coffaro, of course does mostly red wines. I also drink quite a bit of other Dry Creek Valley and Russian River Valley wines, so although I can't provide A-B information about the same wine, I can offer an opinion without any data to back it up.
The envelope, please...
Ok, I think screwcapped wines age at about 1/3 to 1/2 the rate of similar cork-closed wines. I haven't noticed any "reductive" flavors or nuances. I have had one bottle of Coffaro red wine that I didn't like, compared to another bottle of the same wine in the same vintage. I suspect that the one I didn't like was maybe bottled at the end of a barrel. It had more sediment and was much more oaky than usual. I can't blame that on the screwcap.
David, Matt (the former assistant winemaker) and one of the tasting room people all say that they've had many fewer returns of "bad bottles" than when they were using foam corks. (I didn't like the way foam corks behaved after a few years, and David being an experimenter, wanted to try closures that eliminated "corked" wines. The screwcap certainly has done that.
A few other quality Sonoma County wines, especially whites, are being screwcapped these days.
Inman Family (Kathleen Inman) screwcap all their wines. Dry Creek Vineyard is using screwcaps on many of their whites. I'm not sure if it's all of them. Wind Gap uses a lot of screwcap closures.

I just enjoyed a bottle of Coffaro Block 4 (zin-based field blend) '06 last night that tasted more like 3 or 4 years than 9 years from vintage. Just smoothing out.

[Robin Garr]

Robin, I have opinions about almost everything.

Thanks, John. That's one of the best personal-experience reports on screwcap aging that I've seen yet.

[Jenise]

Yes! I don't recall the wine now, but about 1-2 years ago we had a screwcapped bottle that was clearly off. IIRC, I reported it here as I was so amazed to have that happen. No outward appearance of damage, but the wine inside was badly off, and another like bottle was fine.

My "bad" bottle had nothing to do with being corked, or tasting cooked, or turned sour or oxidized. I can't find any way to put blame on the cap or the bottle or the cellaring - they lived in my cellar, they came home in my car under similar conditions.
The only explanation I can think of is that the bottles' contents were somehow different.
The "bad" bottle wasn't bad in a classic technical sense, it was just way off from what I had learned to expect, and not very tasty to me.

I’m not so sure I would consider dents and dings on a screw cap a non-issue. As mentioned by Peter the seal is at the very top of the bottleneck where the liner itself makes contact. The purpose of the rest of the screw cap design is to maintain that seal or “aid” the liner material to “perform” the way it was design to. So depending upon where the dent or ding is located on the screw cap might actually either reinforce seal (make the liner material perform “better” than it was designed to) or compromise the seal.

When the “enclosure wars” first began screw caps were introduced for “premium wines” with only two types of liners. Today there are now several different types of liners to choose from and it seems that new patents are coming out all the time. Because of the research done by the screw cap and alternative enclosure people we have a better understanding of bottle aging and the role of OTR (Oxygen Transmission Rate). Sooner or later don’t be surprised if the natural cork manufacturers will grade natural cork not only by visual inspection but also by OTR (maybe grade the “better” natural corks with a narrow rage of OTR under given conditions).

Salute

Dear Victor,

Yes, I'm sure there's an issue, nothing is perfect. It's just that before you had a guaranteed failure rate that was at least 5%, and perhaps more, because the concentration was so low that the fruit was merely reduced. I've had enough screwcapped bottles at this point to say that the failure rate is below 1%, at least for me. Only a large-scale industry study could say for sure, but I think overall it's dramatically better.

I remember our resident (now ex-pat, I guess) cork expert, Stuart Yaniger, did some research on OTR, which of course was the downfall of his NeoCork product. His study (not published, to my knowledge) showed that the OTR of a great cork was about 1 ullage per decade. Almost, but not quite, zero. I love that now you can select your OTR based on the liner!

Walt

Not sure about that.

If OxTrans in cork closures is via the seal between the cork and the side of the bottle then the seal depends on fitting the cork to the bottle, that the bottle neck is regular and that the cork retains elasticity.

Cork manufacturers rating corks for OxTrans would only work if trans happened through the cork, which I don't think it does, or if they're rating elasticity but the other factors are outside their control, (bottle manufacture quality and using correct size)

I to like the idea that one can now pick and choose a liner or alternative enclosure with a predictable OTR. But for me the question is- a “fixed and predictable” OTR “desirable”? Basically what the screw cap and alternative enclosure researches are trying to do is “mimic” what a “high quality “ natural cork proved to do. (In one of these discussions, Hoke mentioned a “dial” enclosure).

In today’s day and age we have the technology, to reproduce dies and molds with a great deal of accuracy and consistency. I’m sure glass manufacturers have their “glass recipes” and manufacturing process and procedures “down pat” so that the properties of their finish product can be fairly predictable (or predictable within reason or meet reasonable standards).

Salute

>> But for me the question is- a “fixed and predictable” OTR “desirable”? <<
Well, is a wine of consistent quality desirable?
If you can take the bottle and closure out of your analysis, isn't that a good thing? Unless, of course, that some bottles have their quality enhanced by the glass, cork, oxygen passage, etc., and others -- as we well know! -- have their qualities totally ruined by one or more of those factors.

The choice of enclosure IMHO is the last of the “winemaking decisions”. The only person to make this decision is the person who knows the wine the best-the winemaker. The enclosure used to seal a bottle of wine should be determined by the wine type and style, how the wine was made, how the wine was “bulk aged” etc. (more or less you want “bottle evolution” to be more or less “desirable” for a given type and style of wine, and more or less “follow suit” with how the wine was made and “bulk aged”).
As far as “timing” goes, when it comes to winemaking “timing” is important.

Salute

I to like the idea that one can now pick and choose a liner or alternative enclosure with a predictable OTR. But for me the question is- a “fixed and predictable” OTR “desirable”? Basically what the screw cap and alternative enclosure researches are trying to do is “mimic” what a “high quality “ natural cork proved to do. (In one of these discussions, Hoke mentioned a “dial” enclosure).

In today’s day and age we have the technology, to reproduce dies and molds with a great deal of accuracy and consistency. I’m sure glass manufacturers have their “glass recipes” and manufacturing process and procedures “down pat” so that the properties of their finish product can be fairly predictable (or predictable within reason or meet reasonable standards).

Salute

My understanding is that corks often fail because of the irregularity of the inside of the bottle neck, in part because it's not in contact with the mold. But the lip of the bottle does touch the mold, which in theory makes it more consistent.

>> But for me the question is- a “fixed and predictable” OTR “desirable”? <<
Well, is a wine of consistent quality desirable?
If you can take the bottle and closure out of your analysis, isn't that a good thing? Unless, of course, that some bottles have their quality enhanced by the glass, cork, oxygen passage, etc., and others -- as we well know! -- have their qualities totally ruined by one or more of those factors.

It's a very good thing, even if we're used to not having it. I want my wine artisanal, but not the packaging.

I've never had a screwcap that I thought was oxidated because of a bump, generally a fan.

Reduction is a real issue, but one that I think can be addressed as winemakers learn to work with closure.

Dale,

My understanding is that the new range of closures with different oxygen transmission characteristics will allow producers to match the closure to the wine, rather than the other way around.

I haven't add any problems with bashed screw caps either; there are certainly a range of application mistakes that can be a problem, too, but I haven't had any wine ruined by them yet.

Hi Oliver,
On “older bottles” I found it extremely difficult (almost impossible) to reinsert the cork into the bottle with the “wet side” down by hand (I always had to turn the cork “upside down”, drive the “dry side” in first to reinsert the cork). Today however on some of the “newer” bottles I find that I can reinsert the cork the same exact way in which I took it out (“wet side” down) by hand. Back in the day when the glass manufacturer gave you the “neck ID” (inside diameter) they took one measurement 3/8 of an inch (or 10 mm) from the rim of the bottle. Today if the glass manufacturer claims he produces the bottle to a “given standard” he takes measurements at intervals from the rim towards lower neck.

Salute

Dale,

My understanding is that the new range of closures with different oxygen transmission characteristics will allow producers to match the closure to the wine, rather than the other way around.

I haven't add any problems with bashed screw caps either; there are certainly a range of application mistakes that can be a problem, too, but I haven't had any wine ruined by them yet.

Curious, Oliver.....how does a winemaker choose the OTR on the closure?? If he's given a
choice of X ml O2/yr or 2X or 3X...how does he choose which one to use? I would think it
would take yrs of experience to get a feel for that.
Tom

Got my Balgeras from WEx last Wed. Hardly wait to try them again.