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A top Australian red winemaker on cork |
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I recently tasted vintages 1995-2000 of the truly excellent Cabernet Sauvignon from Moss Wood in Margaret River, Western Australia and noticed that the most recent vintage was poured from a bottle with a screwcap. This struck me as significant for a complex, oak-aged wine like this, designed for many a long year's ageing, so I asked its maker, Keith Mugford, whether he had had a major rethink. Here's his reply. We have had serious issues re corks for many years but I have been especially irritated since about mid-2000, when it became clear that our Chardonnay wines from 1992 onwards are showing substantial losses to Random Bottle Oxidation. If you try any wine pre the '92-'99 era, it can appear 10 years younger, not older, than the suspect wines. During the '90s, by the way, we did not change our winemaking technique to any great extent. In particular, we did not drop our SO2 levels. So, in my view, the cork is the major culprit. Fast forward to 2002 and we took a decision in March last year to use stelvin [screwcap] closures on all our wines, at least on a trial basis. With consumer acceptance on the rise and quality bottles and machines available to fit the closure properly, we thought it was time to make a stand. We purchased sufficient bottles and stelvins to bottle 200 cases each of the Moss Wood 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon as well as 2002 Semillon and also 2002 Ribbon Vale Vineyard Semillon Sauvignon Blanc. Our plan was to use some for trials and comparative tastings and sell around 150 cases to keen buyers. By the time we got around to the bottling run (July last year) it was clear that we had really under-estimated consumer and trade interest in Australia. The groundswell of support was much greater than we could have hoped for. For our bottlings completed in March this year, our commitment to non-cork closures has jumped dramatically. The following wines and the approx stelvin percentages are: 2001 Ribbon Vale Cabernet Merlot - 50 per cent 2001 We are bottling under cork to appease the more traditional markets, currently including the UK, but are pushing all agents to take the stelvin closures. I am hopeful that even these markets will change their view. I acknowledge that the stelvin (or any other screwcap) for that matter is not perfect but it does not taint and, when applied correctly, will not leak. In addition, because the seal is consistent, the variation between bottles is substantially reduced. Since we now have a large control sample to reference against, we can now see clearly how many bottles are damaged by corks that are not sealing correctly. There is no taint problem, just massive variation in the rate of oxidation. It is becoming clear how that great wine expression evolved - there are no great wines, only great bottles. The great bottles had corks that actually sealed! The other point which gets argued is that we don't know how a wine will age under stelvin. Amusingly, some of the great purveyors of this witchcraft are winemakers. The fact is, there is no scientific work which actually shows that wine ages better under cork. No such thing exists. What we can say, based on the Riesling experience of Yalumba, for example, is that wines will age at least as well as they do under corks and probably better. Or, put another way, if people buy their Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon under stelvin, the worst outcome you can expect is that it will be at least as good as a cork. When doing comparative tastings of the 2000 vintage of that wine in Sydney last week, the results were interesting. After nearly one year in bottle, the cork-sealed wines are losing freshness and life compared to their stelvin counterparts. However, the stelvin wine is still aging. The flavours are evolving but the intensity is not being lost. It will be interesting to follow the progress. My guess is that stelvins are not the last development we will see in wine closures. It's not perfect but now that there is interest in using new products, the development process will speed up. Even so, it still remains a vast improvement. Finally, we can offer a closure which goes some way to ensuring that what we bottle is what the customer gets to taste. It still makes me laugh - can you name any other food product which tolerates a 10 per cent failure rate on its closure? Can you imagine the outcry if that happened with milk? Oh, by the way, in answer to your question, all the rest of the Moss Wood 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon currently on the boat to England is cork finish. Sorry. Maybe we can win the argument in future. Stelvin wines will have a major advantage over their cork counterparts because at least five per cent of them will be better because they taste like wine not damp cardboard! That's got to be a bonus. When Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon is in barrel, it has a dissolved oxygen content of about 0.5 mg/l. That is sufficient to drive the aging process such that the wine fills out and softens over a two-year period. That wine is then bottled with a dissolved oxygen level of around 2-3mg/l ie, four to six times higher. The oxygen is picked up during the various transfers that take place from barrel to bottle. Therefore, even under the stelvin closure, there is plenty of oxygen available to drive the aging process in bottle. In addition, the stelvin seal will allow some oxygen to pass into the wine as well, although not at the same rate as corks. By the way, glad you like the 2000 Sem [my
wine of last week] - we're quite proud of it. Of all the wines we
made using wild yeast ferments, that is close to the best (all the Moss
Wood
wines from the '99 and '00 vintages were made with that technique).
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