The Auswine Forum

I decided to do the "right thing" and take Lynne out for lunch today. We went to a restaurant (about 200 meters up the road from my shop) that had recently changed hands.

I took a bottle of Torzi Mathews 2002 Frost Dodger Shiraz because I had just tried the 2003 and wanted to compare them whilst the 03 was still fresh in my mind. When we got to the restaurant, the waiter twisted the Stelvin and the whole thing, including the sleeve came off. Bloody thing was oxidised!

Walked back to the shop, back into the cellar and pulled out a Sylvan Springs 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon, that should eb just the thing to have with lunch. Walked back to the restaurant and the waiter pulled out the tree bark plug and I took a sniff, corked! It was back across the road, back into the cellar and time for another lucky dip. This time it was a Tartachallice 1998 Blackstone Shiraz and despite the 16 degree initial temperature, was lovely.

Bloody corks.... bloody Stelvins... you canÂ’t always win.

TORB wrote: When we got to the restaurant, the waiter twisted the Stelvin and the whole thing, including the sleeve came off. Bloody thing was oxidised!

I had a half-similar experience with a Stelvin-capped wine. In the normal way, I grabbed the skirt/sleeve and twisted the bottle. There seemed to be a breaking of the seal, but the cap refuse to part with the lower body of the sleeve. Had to pull the entire thing of the top of the bottle. Difference was that the wine was fine - clearly the seal was perfectly OK, just the top failed to split from the bottom section. I don't know the technicalities of screwcap application - this must surely have had something to do with the capper machine set-up.

I'm surprised in your case, considering the seal hadn't worked at all, that the bottle wasn't leaking...

cheers,
Graeme

Hi GG,

Yep, it was interesting because when I looked inside the top, there was wine in the thread of the metal. Bizarre!

Both sound like a setup problem the top not removing is because insufficient pressure by roller to the perforation. and the first one in the restaurant was insufficient pressure all round and stelvins NEVER get stored inverted as with cork

Lucky your cellar was so close ...

Look on the bright side, you had walked 1km before lunch.

You earned the right to feast

.... but I took the woofers for a 6 kilometre walk before going into the shop this morning. DoesnÂ’t that count.

Ric,

Would you be entitled to a refund or replacement on the first bottle, due to the faulty screwcap? By my way of thinking you should be.

I sometimes wonder if people assume that there will never be another refund of a bottle(s) of wine, once they bottle everything in screwcap. My understanding is that there can be more sources of TCA than just corks alone, albeit less likely to contaminate the wine. I'd be interested in the views of others on this.


Cheers

Jamie

A faulty wine is a faulty wine regardless of closure. It's just that 95% of what we return now is TCA caused by cork.

I took back three TCA bottles to my retailer this week, a bad week for cork taint.

Despite giving them a fair thrashing over the last two years, including my own home grown drops, I've yet to find a faulty wine under screw.

radioactiveman wrote:Ric,

Would you be entitled to a refund or replacement on the first bottle, due to the faulty screwcap? By my way of thinking you should be.
Jamie

Jamie,

The wine was sent to me by the producer so I could compare it to the 2003 which is about to be released (I reviewed the 03 last week.) LetÂ’s put it this way, you would not have wanted to be the guy from the bottling company that took DomenicÂ’s phone call about it.

TORB wrote::cry: .... but I took the woofers for a 6 kilometre walk before going into the shop this morning. DoesnÂ’t that count.

Ric:

You haven't trained the woofers to smell out those faulty Stelvins yet?

Mike

PS Last Stelvin I unscrewed, the metal cap came off but the plastic insert stayed stuck to the top of the bottle. Had to pull it off.

You haven't trained the woofers to smell out those faulty Stelvins yet?
.

Just imagine what the cashed-up bosses of Coles and Woolworths could be dreaming up if they read this...

.. an in-store production line. Before your bottle gets scanned through, the cork/Stelvin is removed, and the bottle placed down in front of the 'sniffer dog'. The bloodhound is trained to detect the smallest quantities of TCA/oxidation/(low alcohol content!!) and if the wine is not up to his standard, it is thrown. If it passes, it moves along the chain to the store manager who operates the 'penfolds-style' recorking machine. Inert gas, cork in/cap on, and away to the counter. No wine faults ever again. Total customer satisfaction.

Ok, OK, so if customer satisfaction is the driver, we may be waiting a bit longer until one of the smaller outlets takes up the idea. But still, just imagine...

mphatic,

After the wine has been through the rigramole, then when its recorked, if the cork has TCA....

I read a post of another forum where a company was asking for advise as they were thinking about sinking money into a decice that could measure TCA etc in a bottle from the refracted light. So it may not be that far fetched, or that far away. Apparently the technology has jsut been invneted that may make it possible.

TORB wrote:mphatic,

After the wine has been through the rigramole, then when its recorked, if the cork has TCA....

I read a post of another forum where a company was asking for advise as they were thinking about sinking money into a decice that could measure TCA etc in a bottle from the refracted light. So it may not be that far fetched, or that far away. Apparently the technology has jsut been invneted that may make it possible.

So instead of trying to come up with a way to non-destructively test the cork (without leaving on it any other chemicals or bacteria) they are attempting to come up with a device to determine whether the sealed bottle is OK ???

I can't help but wonder who this is going to benefit. Once the wine is corked, the winery has lost money. Is doesn't matter whether it is detected at the winery, supplier warehouse, retailer, or at home. All it seems to be doing is speeding up the process of returning the faulty wine to the winery for them to exchange. Sure, if a company never lets a corked wine out to the public their brand image may improve, but how many companies have you turned away from because they sold you a corked wine??

Lets face it, without knowing anything about the product that you're talking of, I'd guess that it would be at least 10 years before such a device was small enough, reliable enough, and cheap enough for the average red bigot to buy for home. Even if it was incorporated into the bottling production line I'd give it a 5 year timeframe. Is this the best that can be done over this time period?

To me this seems like a band-aid solution to a much larger problem.
If I were a cork producer, I would either
a) start investing more time and money in the required research quick smart (regardless of whether the problem starts at the winery/bottling facility or not), or,
b) Build a light metals processing plant...

Sorry, that was me

Good one mphatic, still laughing about your suggestion B

707 wrote:Good one mphatic, still laughing about your suggestion B

I read somewhere recently (can't remember where) that at least one of the big cork producers was doing exactly that.

Even recent history is littered with examples of companies opposing an innovation 'whose time has come' that failed to read the writing on the wall and died as part of the resistance: Wang, Atari, dare I say Kodak?

cheers,
Graeme