Newsletter
Vintner's Exclusive Wines Inc.
Serving Brampton and Surrounding areas for all wine making needs
Corks have been around for hundreds of years and have a history as
a bottle stopping device. Corks are made from the outer layer of the
bark and once stripped it takes 9 long years of regeneration. So the
same tree can be stripped again. They go though this process for
about 150 years.

There has been a lot of fuss that been going around about natural
cork stoppers and their RCA problems. The combination of chlorine,
moisture and mold held within the cork has caused a condition known
as 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole or RCA. The chlorine has been used in the
cork cleaning process and now with moisture and certain molds that’s
what causes a tainted wine also known as a “Corked” bottle (causing
the mould or old soggy newspaper smell and taste in the wine). The
largest producer of natural corks has spent millions of dollars to
ensure reduction in RCA.  So natural corks are here to stay.

The use of plastic corks (polymer) and screw caps… are these two
types any better? Plastic corks are made from polymer, synthetics
that are oil based corks that are shaped exactly like a natural cork.
They have problem of leakage and oxidation. They tend to have an
odor from the materials used to make these corks. There are labs
that tested these closers and have found it causes organic problems
in the wines. They do a very good job adhering to the bottle that
most of the time it is impossible to remove the cork from the bottle.
Good luck trying to re-insert the cork.

Then we have the screw cap made from aluminum material that seals
the bottle and lets no air into the bottle. Seems like a good thing
but the screw cap has its problems too. The sulphur compound that’s
left over when the wine is bottled can’t escape through this metal
caps. When the wine is opened, you get a smell and taste like rotten
egg, burned matches, or rubber. So what does it come down to… that
both the plastic corks and the screw caps are airtight and have their
own problems. Some producers claim that wines evolve fine under
these two closures. But they can not present a bottle of wine that
has been aged for a couple of decades with these closures. So there
is not enough history to prove that this closures work better then
natural corks. Description of different types of corks
Corks