- Location
- London
Can screwcapped wines support medium or long term storage on their sides rather than upright? it seems counterintuitive.
Storage of screwcapped wines?
- Thread starter Thom Blach
- Start date
- Location
- Dorset, England
And take up much needed space in the racks?!
- Location
- Australia
Yep. For screwcap seals the storage position (vertical or horizontal) doesn't matter (i.e., no need to keep a cork moist to ensure limited oxygen ingress - the oxygen ingress will be the same no matter the bottle position for a screwcap seal).
- Location
- London
And the wine won't corrode the seal in any way with long-term contact?
- Location
- London
screwcap > tree bark
- Location
- Essex
My experience here is the same... have tried screwcapped wines with age stored horizontal / vertical with no apparent difference (not a contemporaneous like for like tasting but broadly similar age for similar wines at different times).... to be fair though they were largely Australian Rieslings so pretty indestructable in any case
- Location
- Rock, North Cornwall
I have a collection of well aged screw capped Glaetzer wines here stored horizontally and have never had an issue with any of the bottles.
I have aged Neudorf Moutere Chardonnay under screwcap in a normal/horizontal way for nearly 20 years with no ill effects whatsoever.
Never corked, always consistent
and ages quite slowly.
My last bottle of 2007 drunk in January
Never corked, always consistent
and ages quite slowly.My last bottle of 2007 drunk in January
- Location
- London
What are people's experiences with failed screw caps (excluding damage)?
- Location
- South Africa and UK
I have 20 year old screwcap wines as it’s my closure of choice . No issues with storage, reduction etc etc . Some upright, some horizontal
- Location
- London
Only one ever out of thousands. A bottle of 2008 Voyager Estate chardonnay. The wine had somehow managed to seep through the seal and dry/crust. Wine was fairly heavily oxidised. No apparent ullage
- Location
- Marlborough
I have never seen a screwcap that has failed. I can recall one with obvious damage through being bashed and cracked, but that was a brand-new wine. The advantage of a damaged screwcap is that it is generally instantly noticeable, unlike a corked wine.
- Location
- Marlborough
I have had screwcap wines lying on their side for at least 20 years, again mostly Aussie Riesling. My Mesh from the early 2000s might be almost drinkable.
- Location
- London
Why do you keep them on their sides, Kevin?
- Location
- London
So they don’t fall over when the earth shakes.
- Location
- Marlborough
Hello Thom
It wasn't a conscious decision to store them upright or lying down. Obviously I have many dozens of my own wines stored standing up in cartons and many purchased screwcap wines in cartons stored standing up, but in my early days I used to store everything in racks lying down. Basically, the rieslings went into the riesling section regardless of whether they were cork or screwcaps. And as I suspect I am like many people and I buy much more riesling than I actually drink, many have been lying back waiting for the appropriate moment for many years.
I must say I have miles more confidence that my screw-capped rieslings from the early 2000s will be drinking well than I do that my Germans from the same period will be pristine.
- Location
- Marlborough
Interesting you say that. I was standing in front of my racks, deciding what to pull out for dinner drinks, when we had quite a big earthquake and everything started to shake. I braced myself to catch everything as they fell. There were only a couple that came loose and I managed to catch them. I call them racks but they are actually bins with up to 18 bottles in each, all resting on top of each other. Once one bottle goes, many others tend to follow.
- Location
- West Yorkshire
I have a zero failure rate with screwcaps, and I store almost all of them laying down (purely as this is more convenient).
I have drunk plenty of screwcapped wines with significant age (20-25 years) and all are ageing perfectly and consistently within a case. I am 100% sold that it is by far the best closure for a bottle of wine.
- Location
- Europe
For a long time the reputation was that ageing was different than under cork. When did they solve that?
- Location
- West Yorkshire
It is different - it's consistent
In all seriousness, I always got the impression that was just propaganda used to promote the use of corks and create doubt about (then unknown) long term ageing under screwcap. As screwcaps have now been widely used for long enough, the evidence is surely overwhelming that there is no issue with long term ageing?
But I'm not a winemaker, everything I've said is just my own opinion based on personal experience.
- Location
- Marlborough
I think it was the cork people that needed to "solve that" rather than the screwcap producers.
- Location
- Europe
Do screwcapped wines age at the same pace with the same outcome as cork?
Is there significant variation in ageing outcomes between different types of screwcap?
Are they better or worse for good maturation than the various modern cork-related alternatives?
- Location
- Kent & Köln
I'm a romantic, so I have an affection for the whole drama of removing the capsule and pulling a cork, taking special care with an older cork. In the early days of screw caps I associated them with industrial bulk wines, and I suppose that is the image they are still shaking off. Clearly screw caps are efficient. My wife definitely prefers them when opening bottles for people.
- Location
- Dorset, England
IR hosted an Edelstone themed off-line in 2019 & I also took along 2002 Dutschke Shiraz Single Vineyard St. Jakobi Vineyard under cork & screwcap. There was no real difference, with cork maybe a tad fresher. I have one bottle remaining under screwcap which I will open this week.
- Location
- London
Wines closed with screwcap always seem to me to show a degree of reduction, though that is by no means a necessarily bad thing. Default decanting is a good idea.