Cork has been used for sealing wine bottles for over 300 years.
At LedaSwan we intend to continue this practice as part of our Organic winemaking.
The use of cork to seal wine bottles is under review throughout most of the wine industry, mainly to reduce costs. The basic positions are these: Cork is of course, a natural product (the bark from an oak tree – Quercus Suber), and thus the properties vary from one cork to another.

Our cork oak tree is growing in the car park.

While the cork method of sealing bottles is quite inferior to other closures such as crown seals on beer bottles; cork makes a modest contribution to the character of wine. Fresh corks smell wonderful.
In a similar way to how oak imparts special characteristics to wine; cork aroma’s for me, are preferable to those of synthetic ‘corks’. “Cork taint” is the unpleasant experience of the occasional cork that “goes off” but this is becoming rarer as cork manufacturers improve their processing techniques.

The only issue with this of course is that we do not know a natural cork is bad until it proves itself. Another advantage is the certainty that you will be able to extract a cork out of a bottle without breaking the bottle compared with some synthetic corks.

Synthetic corks have been known to set hard in the neck of the bottle. We assure our customers of course, that in the event a bottle is spoiled or ‘corked’, it will be replaced or refunded.

Ask us about our DIAM corks!  We are now using these in all our wines. Remember corks have a lower foot print than other types of closures.