BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Wine Corks

Do you care if your wine is bottled with a synthetic cork? Do you insist on real cork?

I had preferred, until recently, only corked wines. However, with the declining cork tree population and with the bacteria causing the destruction of so many cases of European wines, I am becoming more forgiving on that point. Though, I am still kind of "snobby" about the issue - LOL, just ask my hubby.

Kitty

I used to see synthetic corks as "slumming it." Now I've come across some very good wines with synthetic corks. The reasons you pointed out Kitty are excellent ones for not using real cork. Have you seen the hybrid corks, the top half synthetic and the bottom half real cork. The wine only touches the real cork portion.

No, I have not seen those! Which labels are using them? I would be most interested to try those wines.

Kitty

I am WAY against natural cork. You can't imagine how many beautiful wines I have had that were destroyed by cork problems. I would MUCH rather have plastic and have great wine. PLASTIC PLASTIC PLASTIC. I want the wine to taste great. I don't care what kind of bottle or cork is involved!

I really don't care if it has synthetic cork. I read an article recently (here) about the bacteria that sometimes effects that natural cork and gets into the wine.

Definitely cork tree corks - always. No compromises.

AINTD, doesn't it bother you that about 10% (if not more) of the bottles you pay good money for are destroyed by the cork mold? This isn't just my guess, it's an often tested fact. The destruction ranges from a mild bad taste to a completely undrinkable wine. If I'm paying money for a wine, I don't want to open it and find it undrinkable ...

Again, think of all the new wine drinkers out there that open a bottle, realize they don't like how it tastes, and think they just don't like wine. Really, they got a bad bottle that nobody would like. Would you go for a 10% failure rate with meat products? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Nope, it doesn't bother me and yep, I'd go for that rate.

If an initiate in wine drinking opens a bottle with a defect in a cork and finds it unpleasant (by the way, a young wine drinker won't notice THAT much difference, since bad corks do not affect that musch except for severe and rare cases) and decides not to drink wine, well, then it's his/ her problem of being a bit shallow in logic. By the way, to be introduced into wine-drinking, you need to know someone who does it, so he could direct you for a while AND indicate it to you that this particular bottle of wine is damaged.

Good wine-makers test their corks. I mean REALLY test them.

10% rate is not that high. It also is not random. You'd usually have a group of bad corks, rather than every tenth bottle. I believe I have had a coupe of bottles with bad corks. Not a big deal. Taste is a bit spoiled. Wine was not expensive. I can live with that.

10% failure rate with meat? Sonds dangerous, except for I'm not sure how a meat can really fail. You buy not expensive meat, it might be not the freshest and purest around, but it's what you pay for. You buy the most expensive meat - you have an assurance that it will be the best, the human kind can make (with help of animal of course ...) at the moment. I eat meat a lot. Haven't had a single problem. You buy the cheapest meat around from England or USA (no offence), well, then it's up to you to know if you're lucky enough to be able to afford this risk.

A cannot except a plastic cork in my bottle of wine. It's just against everything. AND, do not forget the fact that wine can remain in bottles for a few years improving itself. Wouldn't improve much with a plastic cork.

The hybrid type. Sounds like an american "know-how" to me. It's just not the right way of doing things from my point of view.

I believe that either you exagerate the problem for no particular reason, either you make real bad corks in USA.

Many of the best selling technical stoppers and other synthetic corks come from England or Europe.

The majority of the combo corks are in the testing phase right now in Australia. The general results so far have been that natural cork is best for long aging wines, synthetic is great for wines that will be drunk upon the first year or two after release.