Didn't soak the corks - what to do now?

[Noontime]

So much about home wine making is anecdotal...most people just tend to find what works for them through experience. And there's so many variables and nuances; different size bottles and manufacturers, different cork suppliers, so much time between bottling and opening the bottle to drink (and seeing an issue). It could be that the wicking problem you had was because the cork didn't quite fit perfectly in the neck. It could be that my wicking problem was the same thing, with neither of our experiences having anything to do with sanitizing corks. My advice to everyone is to find what alleviates worrying about your wine and do that...if it continues to work there's no reason to stop.

 

[rustbucket]

I switched from being a light soaker to a non-soaker recently. Originally, I floated my corks in a bowl of Kmeta. This made hand corking easier and provided assurance that no foreign bacteria was being introduced into the wine.

After getting a floor corker and researching the cork soaking question further, I became a non-soaker. I do give the left over corks from the bag of 100 a few squirts of Kmeta solution before vacuum sealing and storing them away. You can avoid this storage issue by buying your corks in bags of 30. The additional cost per cork is nominal.