MedPretzel
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Hi, I translated this article and thought you all might find it interesting. It came from the science part of the popular German Magazine "Der Spiegel" (The Mirror).
Hope you enjoy it!
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People and winemakers (one doesn't exclude the other) are getting sick of normal corks. They make the cellar smell moldy and often times they have to throw out potentially good wine due to bad corks. This happens to roughly 5% of all wine. Screw-caps and crown-corks (?? - direct translation) are just not popular with the wine drinking consumer.
Pro-Wein (Pro-Wine) is going over to an alternative - glass corks. They finally are the answer, as they are neutral to smell and taste. They will bottle roughly 150,000 bottles with the glass corks this year (about half their production). The producer of the glass cork is the American-based company, Alcoa Closure Systems International.
The company is mainly concentrated on aluminum-based closures. The german base is located in Worms, and there is where the glass cork is being made. 5 million Euros and 3 years were invested to develop this new cork.
The cork will first be inserted by hand in the bottle. Then a light aluminum cap will cover it. This allows people to know if it's been opened, as well as preventing damage to the wine and it's glass cork. Instead of a "pop" of the cork, you will hear a light click.
More and more [german] companies have ordered the glass cork for their wineries.
But not all vinters share the euphoria. Most of them don't even want to wait and see how this new cork affects the wine. No one knows how the cork reacts after 25 years or longer. "The closure is not better than others" said the oenologist, Rainer Jung.
Crown-corks or screw caps seem to be the most sensible solution - the wine matures slower and the same in every bottle. "But the metal parts suffer the 'cheap-image'" says Jung. For most wine-drinkers, the eroticism of the "popping" is just about as important as the contents.
Hope you enjoy it!
-------------------------------------
People and winemakers (one doesn't exclude the other) are getting sick of normal corks. They make the cellar smell moldy and often times they have to throw out potentially good wine due to bad corks. This happens to roughly 5% of all wine. Screw-caps and crown-corks (?? - direct translation) are just not popular with the wine drinking consumer.
Pro-Wein (Pro-Wine) is going over to an alternative - glass corks. They finally are the answer, as they are neutral to smell and taste. They will bottle roughly 150,000 bottles with the glass corks this year (about half their production). The producer of the glass cork is the American-based company, Alcoa Closure Systems International.
The company is mainly concentrated on aluminum-based closures. The german base is located in Worms, and there is where the glass cork is being made. 5 million Euros and 3 years were invested to develop this new cork.
The cork will first be inserted by hand in the bottle. Then a light aluminum cap will cover it. This allows people to know if it's been opened, as well as preventing damage to the wine and it's glass cork. Instead of a "pop" of the cork, you will hear a light click.
More and more [german] companies have ordered the glass cork for their wineries.
But not all vinters share the euphoria. Most of them don't even want to wait and see how this new cork affects the wine. No one knows how the cork reacts after 25 years or longer. "The closure is not better than others" said the oenologist, Rainer Jung.
Crown-corks or screw caps seem to be the most sensible solution - the wine matures slower and the same in every bottle. "But the metal parts suffer the 'cheap-image'" says Jung. For most wine-drinkers, the eroticism of the "popping" is just about as important as the contents.