01-27-2004, 12:45 PM
When the wine is transferred from the barrels to the bottles, due to the movement and exposure to the outside air it gains quite a lot of oxygen as you said, not to talk the bottle is never filled completely. During this stage, the wine is not very drinkable (depends on the kind, young fresh wines don't really change much, but older wines do get worse), this is the so called "bottle sickness". At this point the bottle is corked and left to sit there for some time until all the oxygen has pretty much reacted with the wine and the flavour has settled.
The length of time needed, again, depends on the wine, and that brings me to the cap. If you notice, white wines and young rosé or red wines have a rather crappy cap, usually it's plastic and doesn't seal much. That's because these wines will be consumed in a very short time. Basically, all the oxidation will happen on bottling.
as a chemist I should have known that air will nearly always enter "closed" vessels, especially cork + metal wrap. :P .
I will ask one of my spanish colleagues to bring me some good spanish wine next summer. At the moment I mainly drink Italian. I am open for everything however. Last year I bought some wine in Sonoma Valley in California.....and that was fantastic.
Somebody knows why wine is so expensive in the states? I saw 300 dollar bottles in the supermarket. I know you can get every price-class also in europe, but it seemed that the average price was a lot higher in america. Bottles in a normal supermarket started at 10 dollar.
The length of time needed, again, depends on the wine, and that brings me to the cap. If you notice, white wines and young rosé or red wines have a rather crappy cap, usually it's plastic and doesn't seal much. That's because these wines will be consumed in a very short time. Basically, all the oxidation will happen on bottling.
as a chemist I should have known that air will nearly always enter "closed" vessels, especially cork + metal wrap. :P .
I will ask one of my spanish colleagues to bring me some good spanish wine next summer. At the moment I mainly drink Italian. I am open for everything however. Last year I bought some wine in Sonoma Valley in California.....and that was fantastic.
Somebody knows why wine is so expensive in the states? I saw 300 dollar bottles in the supermarket. I know you can get every price-class also in europe, but it seemed that the average price was a lot higher in america. Bottles in a normal supermarket started at 10 dollar.