After seven years of intensive internal research for alternative methods of closure, we have decided to use "DIAM" corks of the brand Oeneo-Bouchage for an important part of our Classic range of wines of the 2006 vintage. This decision comes after the successful test we carried out with this closure on 375ml size bottles in the year 2004 and on a fraction of wines of the 2005 vintage.We have always observed – and this phenomenon is widely known in our profession as one of our main quality issue – that a fraction of the wines sealed with natural cork suffer from what is generally called "cork taint". In fact, this phenomenon seems to have become more marked in recent years, and so in 1998 we began to seriously investigate ways of overcoming the problem.
We studied and experimented with every different type of "cork" that existed on the market (agglomerated, treated, synthetic, 1 + 1 (composite), and screw-caps. For technical questions, the screw-caps is not suited to our way of working because all our wines are palletized or stored on bins, bottles unlabelled, before their labelling at times of shipping. The binning of bottles with these screw-caps closures poses potential problems of leaking on such bottles.
After countless tests conducted with great rigour by Marc Hugel as well as a recent 4 days visit of their premisses in Spain we have finally selected DIAM, manufactured by Oeneo-Bouchage.
This type of cork uses several new techniques :
Extraction of suberine (the "noble" component of natural cork) and elimination of lignine (the "woody" component) Treatment of the suberine by supercritical carbon dioxide (patented process) in order to eliminate practically all the TCA which causes the bad taste known as "cork taint". Assembling the suberine with a binding agent to give each cork a homogeneous structure and perfect neutrality.
In other words, in fact, this type of cork has a triple advantage :
it is neutral to the wine (that is to say, it is not able to transmit any bad taste to the wine). thanks to its 100% homogeneous structure, which guarantees a perfectly normal rate of evolution in the bottle, without the variations encountered previously, we are assured of optimum aromatic freshness in half-bottles of our wines. it ensures (and this is an added bonus) that every cork is identically easy to extract, in fact less strength is needed than before (about 25 kg against 20 to 40 kg for a normal cork and 45 kg for a synthetic cork !), making cork-pulling particularly "comfortable".
The DIAM cork is the result of long years of research by the Oeneo-Bouchage company, and has obtained numerous awards and gold medals at professional wine shows.
For the past seven years we have tested this cork with great success, which has given us sufficient experience to make this choice with every confidence.
In fact, our research shows that the structure of these corks remains unchanged for much longer than 7 years, and we have yet to find a single leaking bottle (which is an added advantage).
Each "DIAM" cork that we will use will carry in addition of our traditional marking, the web address of our Internet site in order to inform our future users of the virtues of this new product.
Full details with the manufacturer's technical specifications Oeneo-Bouchage
In other words, in fact, this type of cork has a triple advantage :
The DIAM cork is the result of long years of research by the Oeneo-Bouchage company, and has obtained numerous awards and gold medals at professional wine shows.
For the past seven years we have tested this cork with great success, which has given us sufficient experience to make this choice with every confidence.
In fact, our research shows that the structure of these corks remains unchanged for much longer than 7 years, and we have yet to find a single leaking bottle (which is an added advantage).
Each "DIAM" cork that we will use will carry in addition of our traditional marking, the web address of our Internet site in order to inform our future users of the virtues of this new product.
Full details with the manufacturer's technical specifications Oeneo-Bouchage
