Comments on: Natural Cork Closures for Wine

By: Matt Williams

Matt Williams — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 15:33:00 +0000

Hi bruway, thanks for the questions! While I haven’t yet made wine from frozen grape juice concentrate I am familiar with some of the issues that can arise.

With regards to your first wine that seems to have lost it’s grape flavor, you may consider stabilizing it with sorbate and then back sweetening with straight grape juice concentrate. The sorbate will prevent the sugar from being fermented and the concentrate will up the grape flavor. It will dilute the alcohol a little bit but I think it’ll be a more well rounded wine.

As for your second wine that needs less sugar, if you want to get it more dry than it is you’ll have to use a very strong yeast strain to try and ferment the remaining sugar. Most yeast strains have an alcohol tolerance around 15-18%. Only a very few champagne yeasts can go as high as 20-22%. Lallemand only offers one yeast strain that goes above 18% and that is Uvaferm 43 (see this table: http://www.lallemandwine.us/products/yeast_chart.php).

On to your blackberry and black currant wines, those are pretty popular wines to make. If you started with good fruit and a good recipe I could see these turning out really nicely. Fermenting at 60 degrees F is going to slow things down a lot but it’s not so cool that the yeast will struggle or produce off flavors. If you dip below 55 F I would be concerned then.

It sounds like you’re off to a great start and I wish you all the best with your wines. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.

Cheers! -Matt

By: Gary Beaumont

Gary Beaumont — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 13:34:00 +0000

It was the wax coating on them, it was leaving a residue in the bottle neck and you could see a film of it on top of the wine when you poured it out.

By: Matt Williams

Matt Williams — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:57:00 +0000

In reply to Gary Beaumont.

Hi Gary,

What sort of problems were those corks giving you?

-Matt

By: Gary Beaumont

Gary Beaumont — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 16:34:00 +0000

It`s been the major problem for me lately, the corks i used to use have changed and gave me problems, I have been trying different makes to find one i`m happy with. Matt had a look at sending me some decent corks but the shipping was a stupid amount. I have hopefully now found a good cork i`m happy with, it`s a fully natural non waxed cork Larsen quality corks.

By: Matt Williams

Matt Williams — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 12:35:00 +0000

In reply to Dave.

Hi Dave,

Thanks! Cork oak is quite remarkable isn’t it?

That’s very good news that after 300-400 corks you haven’t seen any issues. Personally, I believe that the production of corks must have come a long way in the past ten or twenty years as I’m hearing more and more stories like yours. Some small wineries here in Colorado bottle thousands of cases of wine with natural cork and have little to no problems with cork failure.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

-Matt

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 22:51:00 +0000

Nice article, Matt. I learned something useful about the cork oak. I didn’t realize they could harvest at 25 years. I do like the look of a natural cork and can tell by the “squeak” when I’m opening a bottle with a natural cork. I just can’t justify the high cost in my operation.
I prefer the premium agglomerated corks (#9) with the twin discs of natural cork. Last year’s production I used between 300 -400 corks. I have never had a cork fail.
Dave Bergan
Paradise CA