Agglomerated Corks Problems

[smokegrub]

One of my suppliers accidentally sent me what I thought were Normacorks instead of the Altecs I had ordered. Since the wine was in the bottles before I discovered the corks were not the ones I had ordered I had to proceed with bottling. I have an Italian Floor Corker so I figured things would go smoothly--wrong! The corks almost never inserted to the same depth. Some were on the money, some were too deep and some were as much as 1/4 inch above the lip of the bottle! I contacted the supplier and learned that the corks were agglomerated, not Normacorks, and that they had been shipped to me in error. The supplier quickly offered to send me the corks I had ordered and apologized. The company is grapestompers.com. It is refreshing to have a company remedy their error quickly and without a hassle.

Have any of you had similar problems with the agglomerated corks and a floor corker?

 

[grapeman]

Our forum host George Cornelius sells all types of corks. His agglomerate corks have a special coating and unless soaked too much go right in and come right out very well. A lot of us use them with very few problems, especially with floor corkers.

 

[smurfe]

The only problem I ever had with them was due to the corker, not the corks. My issue was the corker scraping the sides of the corks during insertion though.Talk about refreshing customer service. I made a post here about the problems with my corker. George saw it and sent me a new corker with return shipping of my old one pre-paid. I had not even contacted him about my issue and I to thought it was the corks. I never thought it could of been the corker because it had worked fine for a while with no issues and different kinds of corks.While I to prefer to use synthetic corks, I have no complaints at all with the agglomerate corks since my corker was replaced. BTW, I have the Italian Corker as well. Edited by: smurfe

 

[smokegrub]

My corker works flawlessly with the Altec corks so, perhaps, I received a defective batch. They were not soaked; they were rinsed ina solution of K-Meta, dried and inserted. They had a slippery coating but even with that they were extremely difficult to insert, Coring left a significant depression where the corker applied pressure. I tried one of the few Altecs I had when I finished with the agglomerates and it inserted beautifully as usual.Edited by: Smokegrub

 

[Wade E]

I have the Port. floor corker and try to exclusively use Georges Perfect agglomerate corks as they are a great mixture of natural and synthetic and work flawlessly in my corker.