Yes, it's true everyone, this is going to be a big week here at Domaine de la Gramière. We should be receiving our corks today, directly from the producer in Portugal, tomorrow the rosé bottles should be delivered, and later in the week we will be spraying copper and sulfur in the vineyards.
Corks were a tough decision. There has been a lot in the American and British press lately about the use of corks and cork alternatives such as screw caps. I thought long and hard and asked a lot of people what they thought. I really wanted to be bold and bottle all of our wines the first year with screw caps, but I wimped out. Too many people simply said that screw caps remained to them a sign of a cheap plonk and not high quality wine. I know there seem to be more and more quality wines out there with screw caps, but I just wasn't brave enough to jump on the band wagon. The French especially, seem to be against it, the argument mostly being about the ritual of pulling the cork on a bottle of wine. I must admit, I agree with them.
One of my worries was though, that being such a small winery and just starting out, how on earth could we guarantee that we would get great corks from the salesmen buzzing around in the region? It seemed nearly impossible. Well, in talking with our friend Dunja Ulbricht of K&U (our German importers), I found the solution. Dunja told me that the one winery that they never had cork problems with was Poiera. Poeira is a small winery in Portugal run by Jorge Moriera, that makes incredible wines in the Duoro region. Dunja suggested I contact him and ask him where he got his corks. Jorge kindly directed me to Susana Ferraz at a company called Uva Portugal. I looked it up on the internet, and it turns out she's a cork expert that inspects various lots of corks for you and in a way guarantees that they will be of top quality. I called Susana and she was wonderful!
She sent us prices from 3 different suppliers for 3 different qualities of corks and asked if we wanted her to send samples. We didn't really have time to have samples sent, so we told her that we would trust her opinion, but wanted to understand more about the differences between the prices. Apparently , according to Susana, the only difference between the lowest price-range and the highest price-range qualitatively is the visual aspect. The occurence of TCA, which causes a wine to become corked is the same for the highest priced corks as it is for the lowest. Many wineries prefer to have a perfectly smooth-surface cork that's very pretty and that 's why they pay the highest amount of money. Wow, I had no idea. When I explained to her what kind of wine we make and what price it would be selling for, she recommended that we choose one of the cheaper grades, assuring us that they would be of excellent quality for our wine. So, we'll see how they turned out! One of the best things about it was that we also were able to have our logo and "La Gramière" fire-printed onto them! I guess when you're starting out like we are, it's the little things get you excited. I'll post a picture as soon as I get them! (This one is from the Uva Portugal website.)
Thanks so very much to Susana for her expert services!
Comments