Good Morning!

After hitting the Unified Grape and Wine expo last week my head is still spinning with info and I am hoping writing about it will help give me some clarity. Soon I will be able to bottle my first vintages of the TJR Select wines. There is much to consider, bottles, bottle shapes, sizes, color of the glass, labels, label design, what to name your wine, what are the price points of the wine, and that is just to name a few of the things I am researching.

Today I am reading and gathering information on closures. I always thought I would just stick a cork in it and put a capsule (the foil thing over the top of the bottle), over it to look pretty and then it would be all ready to go! After seeing all my options I am considering what to use. The cost of corks, Zorks and screwcaps are all about the same.

What is a Zork? Well, I personally love these, I saw them first on a Zinfandel in Costco, and bought the wine just to see what was up with the cork kinda thing on top…here is what I learned. it is made from recycled plastic, so the Californian in me is happy about that, it looks kinda like a little football helmet on the bottle of wine. You will see it looks like it wraps around the top of the bottle and you pull the plastic tab and it uncoils itself from around the bottle until you get to the top and when it gets to the top you pull it out like a bottle stopper.

With a screwcap or Zork, no corkscrew is needed at all. Just twist and pour, so the Process Engineer in me LOVES the reduction in steps before the wine is in my mouth. The upside for me is I make wine that can be aged, but really, it is ready to drink when it hits the bottle. I mention this because I am told if you use a Zork or Screwcap, once you put the wine in the bottle the wine does not age like it might in a bottle with a cork.

The real battle for most consumers is if wine has a screwcap on it, it seems to mean less quality wine in the bottle.I know that is not true, many major producers with well respected brands use them all the time. I find positives in all the closures. I love corks because I swear I can feel my blood pressure drop from the moment I pull out the corkscrew, until I cut away the capsule and then uncork the bottle, then pour the wine. Some days that seems like too many steps!

It is said that a bottle of wine with a cork in it, will over time allow tiny amounts of air to get in and the wine will constantly be “reinventing” itself, much like Madonna her entire career. These wines will go through times when it is young and volatile, then relaxing and at certain points it can go through a “dumb” stage where it kinda has no real taste or any real special qualities, then it mellows out to it’s potential wine greatness. The problem is if you are cellaring your wine, you have to know when these stages hit or you just have plain old wine and it loses it’s specialness. You see only about 3-7% of all wines sold will be in a cellar. 95% of all wines purchased today will be consumed within 48 hours.

I promised to keep these blogs brief, but sometimes I can not. If you have any thoughts on closure on your wines let me know! I still love corks but there are many options, I can not make up my mind!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi