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So.. what is the general perception of the difference between a T-stopper and a driven cork?

That one is for the short term and the other for keeps?

Well, I don't have a huge number of T-stoppered bottles that have been weighed more than once so their ullage rate can be calculated; but a couple of recent second weigh-ins have delivered rather surprising results:

Taylor 1971 LBV - 37mg p.a. - over five years
Graham 1979 LBV - 56mg p.a. - also over five years

Only a couple of snapshots, but these numbers are well below the average for driven corks of similar age..

uncle tom wrote: ↑21:48 Thu 25 Aug 2022 So.. what is the general perception of the difference between a T-stopper and a driven cork?

I have only ever had a single bottle sealed with a t-stopper that was a leaker. It was recent (a 2019 bottling of S. Leonardo 40 Year Old) and the t-stopper broke as I attempted to open the bottle. That revealed the vein running through the cork which was the cause of both the leak and the breaking. In short, the t-stopper was flawed but the flaw wasn't visible from the outside.

I have had many, many leakers sealed with driven corks.

However...

The vast majority of my bottles sealed with t-stoppers are young and intended for relatively immediate consumption. I cannot recall any bottles more than 20 years old in my possession, though I did once get to partake of a bottle from the 1970s. (It had not leaked.) I may have older bottles that I simply cannot recall at this moment, but at minimum they are few and far between.

The vast majority of my bottles sealed with driven corks are intended for long-term storage, and the leakers have all been bottles that are 40+ years old (meaning 40+ years in bottle).

So it's not exactly a fair comparison, at least for my bottles. My less-than-20-years-old t-stoppers have been quite successful at preventing leaks, while my leakers have all been at least 40 years old. This works doubly in favor of the t-stoppers, because they are both younger and have therefore had less time to leak, and are likely harvested/created using more modern technology so therefore less likely to leak in the first place because they're likely made to higher standards with more precise equipment.

My guess is that t-stopper leakage would increase dramatically as the bottles approached and passed 40 years of age, but my own personal experiment will likely never bear fruit as I would be in my 70s at minimum before any of my t-stoppers reached that age, and that's only if I managed to not drink them before then.

uncle tom wrote: ↑21:48 Thu 25 Aug 2022 So.. what is the general perception of the difference between a T-stopper and a driven cork?
That one is for the short term and the other for keeps?

I would expect a T-stopper to be used where a convenient method of repeatedly opening and resealing the bottle is wanted, with no expectation of long term storage; bottles might well be shipped and kept vertical, reducing the quality/length of requirement for watertight seal. No ageing planned so no air exchange through cork expected.
I would expect a driven cork to be used where a good quality seal is wanted, typically with the expectation of the bottle being shipped and/or stored horizontally, and often such that the bottle may be kept for many years; in some cases this latter would be a primary requirement such as ageing of vintage port, and the seal is required to provide a level of gas permeability.
So for me, while T-stopper is likely generally unsuitable for long (typically may be a less capable seal, and less able to offer permeable gas exchange) that doesn't mean some T-stoppers might be capable (especially on the seal aspect), but that driven corks may be used for short or long as well depending on other aspects of the use case/requirements.

I have only ever had a single bottle sealed with a t-stopper that was a leaker.

In your neck of the woods, I suspect there's very little secondary market trade in T-stoppered bottles. In the UK, small stashes of assorted, and sometimes interesting older bottles turn up quite often in house clearance auction sales.

Three years ago, a 23 bottle stash of Dow 2006 LBV I secured had one bottle with a bad leakage problem and two more with a slight issue - a little worse than I would have hoped to find, but no great surprise, and due to occasional physical defects in the stoppers as you noted, not age related degradation.

I've always been a bit of a 'systems guy' - working out solutions and then refining them.

My working assumption with weighing young bottles was that an interval of at least six years, and preferably a little more, would usually flag up those bottles with corks that were likely to be early candidates for ullaging.

However my early weighing of bottles focused on older ones and only now have I been able to test my six year rule on a young stash.

The subject was six bottles of Fonseca 2004 Crusted, first weighed 12 years after bottling and yesterday again after 18 years.

I weigh to a resolution of 0.1g and the weight loss after six years revealed three bottles with a loss of 0.2g, two bottles losing 0.1g and one with no measurable loss at all. In terms of mg p.a. these figures compute at 33, 16 and zero.

This ullage was a little less than I would have guessed. Does it compromise my system?

The bottles were young, I don't first weigh VP until at least 18 years old, and the average age is closer to 30 years. Moreover my six year interval is designed to be a minimum rather than typical time separation.

The figures do also separate the bottles into sheep and goats, and had there been a really poor cork in there, it would have stood out.

Does my system need a tweak? I think for now it doesn't.

I am just wondering why you don’t weigh them as soon as you have them physically to give you a base measurement. Starting at 18 years seems like it may miss being able to spot a trend of loss at an earlier point. Or is that being completely silly?

I am just wondering why you don’t weigh them as soon as you have them physically to give you a base measurement. Starting at 18 years seems like it may miss being able to spot a trend of loss at an earlier point. Or is that being completely silly?

From a practical stance, although I am now up to 37 wine racks, I am still reliant on keeping a large percentage of stock in stacked cases.

Ullage rates of bottles with poor corks may not be that linear over time. Good corks have an even response to lateral compression along their length, but corks that are uneven in that regard, tend to make a poor fit along part of their length and a very tight fit along a small section. They may as a result offer a very good seal during their initial years but then deteriorate more rapidly later as the wine saturates the dense section. This could cause a long window between first and second weighing to throw up a misleading result.

From an aesthetic point of view, wooden cases are also remarkably good at preserving labels; whilst obviously keeping out dust, cobwebs etc., the wood also seems to regulate humidity and deter label degradation. Cases have to get pretty wet before the labels inside suffer.

Whisky tubes also keep the bottle labels very fresh - I sometimes wonder whether a wine rack made from cardboard tubes, glued together, would function better than the traditional open design.

uncle tom wrote: ↑17:04 Fri 09 Sep 2022 Whisky tubes also keep the bottle labels very fresh - I sometimes wonder whether a wine rack made from cardboard tubes, glued together, would function better than the traditional open design.

That’s an interesting question. Might have problems with strength, though? Particularly with uneven loading or the like? I wonder about PVC piping as an alternative?

That’s an interesting question. Might have problems with strength, though? Particularly with uneven loading or the like? I wonder about PVC piping as an alternative?

The only way to work out strength would be to trial a range of wall thicknesses. A rigid frame or tie straps to stop the tubes from flattening would be needed. I suspect the material empathy of wood and wood derived products such as paper and card is significant. Plastic might work provided the humidity was assuredly low, however any condensation would probably leave its mark on the labels.

Another case inspected, this time a Gould Campbell '85, the remaining eleven bottles after the case was originally opened for the Nov '15 '85 horizontal, with the bottles first weighed soon after.

Levels good, all in neck, and ordered according to visual level. Two of the bottles had stained selos, but as they were not aromatic I did not mark them down as seeping. Was that correct? - the re-weigh would tell.

After second weighing yesterday, the ullage rates range from 16mg p.a. (2 bottles) through 31mg p.a. (3 bottles) 47mg (3 bottles) 63mg (2 bottles) and one bottle at 78mg

The correlation between visual level and ullage rate is very loose; even after 35 years since bottling, variation in original fill is clearly the dominant influence.

And as for the two with stained selos? One was at 63mg ullage - toward the higher end of the spectrum but possibly too low to stain a selo, and the other was one of the 16mg bottles.

This rather confirms my suspicion that dry stains on selos are mostly caused by messy bottling lines, rather than seepage.

@uncle tom - Wow consistent are the weight of empty bottles of the same type?

Wow consistent are the weight of empty bottles of the same type?

Empty bottles seem to be more constant in weight back in the sixties than they are today. Reason? - because (I think) with new bottle making technology they could; before realising that this new found ability didn't make them any money, so they stopped bothering about it.

A more recent trait I've noticed is variable visual fill levels, but with very consistent weights; hinting that some bottling lines may use weight as a signal to stop filling - however I'm not not 100% certain about that - it's a 'work in progress' in this camp.

The last two paragraphs admit of an alternative explanation. Weight now irrelevant, as filling system accurately delivers 750ml in finished product. In the days when filling systems depended on weight of bottle + liquid, reliable weight of bottle mattered.