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The head of development of the Portuguese cork manufacturer Amorim, Dr Miguel Cabral, has judged the horizontal storage of wine bottles in the cellar to be wrong and nonsensical. At a public discussion in Portugal a few days ago, he said, according to the magazine "Drinks Business": "It is a myth that the bottle has to lie down. A cork never dries out in a standing bottle, the humidity in the space between at the neck of the bottle is close to 100 per cent."
Even a damp cellar has no influence on the humidity in the bottle, he says. It only has a positive aspect with wooden barrels. Research in his company had shown that horizontal storage could even damage the cork because its permanent absorption of the wine could make it brittle under certain circumstances. Even a humidity of 90 to 95 percent in the bottle neck is enough to release phenols from the cork into the wine. Already in 2005, he and his colleagues at the Australian Wine Research Institute had published a scientific paper with these findings, but it had not been discussed further in the wine scene.
Moreover, Cabral explained that the interaction between the wine and the phenols from the cork, which often lasts for years during storage, produces aroma components newly identified by him, which are very similar to those from the barrique. The cork, after all, comes from trees of the oak family. He gave the components the name "corklins". They would very slowly change the colour as well as the bitter substances of the wine.
(uka / Photo: Frank Papenbroock - Wikipedia)