# Bad corks?



## jimk (Mar 8, 2010)

Has anybody had any trouble with composit corks falling apart in their wine bottles? I have some pieces of something floating around in my old vine zin that was clear when I bottled it. It doesn't look like anything is growing in it and the wine still looks clear.


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## Wade E (Mar 8, 2010)

I buy the perfect agglomerate corks from fine vine wines and they are the best IMO, bst of both worlds as they are a mixture synthetic and natural which means they let the wine breathe still but they dont soak in any wine and they are also coated with parafin wax for easy insertion and extraction. They also come in a sealed bag with S02.


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## jimk (Mar 10, 2010)

Arrrrgh! So I think I was wrong. I now believe that there IS something growing in my bottled Old Vine Zin. Looks like little clumps of stuff that stay on the bottom (actually on the bottom side since I have them stored on the side) but when I lift the bottle up it all comes up and floats around in the bottle. The wine isn't cloudy, just has this stuff in it. What to do? Should I pour it all into a carboy and add a bunch of meta and then let it sit for a few months? I really don't want to toss it.
Thanks.


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## Tom (Mar 10, 2010)

open one and taste it and see if the clumps are from the cork OR sediment.
If you boiled your corks before corking that could be your problem.
What steps did you do to sanitize before corking


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## Manimal (Mar 10, 2010)

How long has this wine been in bottle? If it is just sediment that has dropped out over time, it's not a problem. Reds often drop out some polymerized tannins and tartrate crystals after some time aging in bottle. It shouldn't be "floating" though, unless it has just been disturbed when you picked up the bottle. If everything smells and tastes fine, Just decant off the sediment when you drink it.

Another possibility is that you simply bottled too soon... I made that mistake with a Cab Franc once... it looked clear so I went ahead and bottled it. But after only a few months in bottle, it dropped a major amount of sediment... in retrospect, even though it looked pretty clear, it obviously wasn't fully clarified yet and it finished clarifiying in the bottle.


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## Leanne (Mar 10, 2010)

Taste it. The tongue is the ultimate test for a wine.


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## jimk (Mar 10, 2010)

It was bottled about 4 months ago. I just noticed the stuff in it last week. I've opened a few bottles over that 4 month period just to see how it was going. Didn't taste bad, just sort of rough. I had decided not to open any more until Dec '10 at the earliest but noticed the stuff in it when I moved some of the bottles to another place. Don't recall there being anything in any of the bottles I opened, but then again, I had the bottles sitting upright for a day or so before I opened them.


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## jimk (Mar 10, 2010)

Tom said:


> open one and taste it and see if the clumps are from the cork OR sediment.
> If you boiled your corks before corking that could be your problem.
> What steps did you do to sanitize before corking




I washed the bottles with hot water and then rinsed them out with one step sanitizer. I put the corks in the sanitizer for a few minutes as I was bottling. Made sure that all sides of the corks were in contact with the sanitizer before corking the bottles.


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