Homemade Garrafeira?

[Frederick Blais]

The cork used for port are not really smaller. Well some producers use smaller cork to save on cost. Recently by opening some Fonseca and Niepoort cork I can testify that they are as big as 1st growth cork.

One cork has to be bigger than the hole in the bottle. It is then compress to it can enter and stay in place. By compressing it you ensure that it makes a better seal by closing all the pores of the cork. Once compress, it does not get back to its original size.

[Al B.]

Moses

There's a gadget that you can buy that holds the cork and compresses it to the required size as you bash on the top of the gadget with a mallet. I used to use these in the days when I made fruit wine with my father, a good few years ago.

Don't forget you need to sterilize everything before you start decanting and bottling and the corks are much easier to deal with if you boil them and hammer them into the bottles while they are still hot and soft.

Of course, you could always experiment even further and seal some of your bottles with driven corks and some with crown corks.....



Alex

[Derek T.]

Ok I got the answer from Dirk. There is no filtering at any stage of production of the Garafeira. Though he carefuly remove most of the dregs.

Thanks, Fred - taking this back to an earlier discussion, I think the closest Moses could get to the real porduction process would be to pour recently bottled VP into a small oak cask and keep it there for 5 years. This would provide him with 7 year old, wood aged, unfiltered wine to be poured into a demijohn and left there for as long as he could manage to avoid drinking it.

I think using tawny or Colhieta would not have the same outcome as it will have been filtered before bottling and this would surely impact the ageing process during the time in the demijohn.

An alternative to the VP method would be to use traditional LBV which will have had 2 or 3 years longer in wood than VP and would therefore require only 2 or 3 years in the small oak cask.

Derek

[Moses Botbol]

Moses
Don't forget you need to sterilize everything before you start decanting and bottling and the corks are much easier to deal with if you boil them and hammer them into the bottles while they are still hot and soft.

Alex

I'll play around with some empty bottles and regular corks then! I like the boiling idea; I should be able to hammer them then. I know that I won't be able to make exact like Niepoort, but it should be interesting.

I wonder if I'll be kicking myself that I didn't do this to more bottles... Seems like no one here has really done this. A side by side 10 years later would so interesting.