My Australian friends gave me a bottle of Mountadam Cabernet Sauvignon from the Eden valley in South Australia. I saved it for a special occasion and opened it last weekend before some friends arrived. Unfortunately the cork was faulty and it broke in the neck of the bottle. Even though I tried hard, I was unable to extract the cork without leaving substantial pieces in the bottle. I had to open a bottle of red Bordeaux to go with our lunch. I couldn't serve wine with pieces of cork floating in it.
My friend and I did taste the wine it was still excellent after all those years in the bottle with concentrated flavours of blackberries and black fruits. The wine was still going strong and was not on the downward slope.
I sealed the bottle with a rubber cord and vacuum pump. My wife and I will finish off the bottle after I have filtered it. I think a tea strainer might do the trick.
Maybe there is a case for using screw caps but will a wine age as well? Pulling a cork, a natural one, still holds romance for me, especially for wines as good as this one.
