Ullage: to re-cork or not?

Large companies, previously mentioned, tend to also use the cheapest and shortest corks possible and therefore the airspace is substantial. However, it should never result in the wine being less than five millimetres above the base of the neck, where the shoulder of the bottle commences to sweep out. If the wine recedes to the bottom of the neck at the wine is fairly young, around ten years old and you wish to store it, for example, another ten years, then it must be re-corked and promptly so. However if this is the case with, say, a fifty year old bottle, then one should not even think of re-corking it, unless it is to be stored for another fifty years! It is a question of choosing the lesser of two evils; the balance being that the re-corking will infuse fresh oxygen into the bottle, inevitably, momentarily hastening the aging process but the safe accomplishment of the bottle being re-corked will slow the ageing process over a longer period of time eventually.

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Office

Spiral Cellars Ltd,
11 Hawkins Drive,
Cheslyn Hay,
Cannock,
WS11 0XT.

Telephone

020 3815 3329