A great wine ha san excellent cork, keep your eyes open
It is absolutely indispensable to recognize the quality of cork for wine producers but also for the consumers, as it reveals very important things
by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
Comparing corks
A great wine needs an excellent cork and to learn how to recognize it helps to under stand what we are drinking. I have not said it clearly but everyone had understood that I am talking about the natural wine corks in one piece that are used for great wines.
Obviously, the main function of the cork is to “seal” practically in a hermetic way the bottle. The cork gets more important according to the length of time the wine must age. For a Brunello it is essential while for a Novello no. Those who have antique bottles must check if their corks are beginning to leak (25-years). If the cork is leaking the nit means that it is completely saturate and cannot hold any longer. At that point you either drink the wine or have the bottle “checked over” in the winery where it was produced. It will be given back to you with a certificate that states that the cork has been changed, in the case of very expensive bottles this is done in the presence of a notary.
The cork closure comes from the bark of the adult oak tree (Quercus suber) which is de-barked every 9/12 years, by hand, from May to August. 60% of this
Cork classification
production comes from Portugal but excellent corks also come from Sardinia and Spain, while more recent and less famous are the corks from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Every company offers different sized, quality and priced corks: from 0,20 cents to 1.50 Euro.
Corkis formed by dead cells of the wood tissue. The small veins and the visible pores seen in the cork are the canals which, in the plant, allow the gaseous exchanges between the inside and outside of the trunk.
For the preservation of a wine the canals are a defect because they produce an excess transpiration. So the first thing to consider is the compactness of the cork and the near absence of these canals. The hand chosen corks, where the imperfections are practically absent, are the most expensive.
The cork length is also very important. The 5 cm corks are the most frequently used in long ageing wines such as Barolo and Brunello but frequently 6 cm corks are used too. Shorter corks give less certainties with the passing of time, however there are also some producers, even among the most considered, prefer shorter corks but with a wider diameter.
Cork selection
Many corks are treated with hydrogen peroxide to make them whiter and disinfect them often they are also waxed to facilitate the inserting and extraction. To be sincere a growing number of wine producers prefer natural untreated corks. So the beauty of the cork is not and indicator of the quality of the closure.
Let us now look at the largest problem of all: the smell of corked. This is the major inconvenience in using cork closures and the producers as wineries do their best to prevent this happening through thorough checks in laboratory and repeated trials. However it can happen, so one must learn to recognize it so as not to put a wine with a defect on the table. The smell of a corked wine is similar to sawdust and covers any other aroma. If the cork has such a smell it is necessary to taste the wine and if it has defects throw it away, waiting for it to disappear is useless. As well as the smell of cork there are other types of deviances in the aroma that come from pollution in the oak woods, or in the productive processes or prom the places where the cork has been stored. These imperfections can ruin the pleasure of a great wine even though they are less devastating than the smell of cork, and, fortunately, these often diminish with oxygenation.