THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
January 2017
The newsletter from ProCork where technology and nature merge
Phillip Jones
Recognition
In this newsletter we give a little profile about Phillip Jones, the owner/winemaker at Bass Phillip and a ProCork user since 2007. He is well known to Pinot Noir connoisseurs worldwide and in Australia he and his wine have reached icon status where his Bass Phillip Reserve 2010 won the 2014 Wine of the Year by James Halliday.
"Make no mistake about it ... this a brilliant Pinot Noir, undoubtedly one of the finest being produced in Australia. Cote de Nuits-like characteristics are evident in the gorgeously sweet, plum, berry, and cherry fruit flavors infused with cinnamon and allspice. .... full-bodied, beautifully concentrated, with superb purity, creamy, big, thick, Burgundian-like texture … and a long, concentrated finish. Extremely complex, … this is beautifully made wine. .... a brilliant effort." ROBERT M. PARKER JR, The Wine Advocate
Bass Phillip was judged the overall most preferred wine at the “Domaine de la Romanee Conti vs the World” Blind Tasting 2011 Singapore, http://hermitagewine.com/events/domaine-de-la-romanee-conti-world-blind-tasting-results/
To understand the man is to understand determination and meticulous attention to the details that count. He cuts away the unnecessary pomp and pursues the essence. A maverick? He has certainly made his own way and followed his own intuitive sense. With his wines reaching stellar heights in price and collectability, Phillip Jones has proven to be particularly canny.
His response says it all, when reminded his wine was judged the overall most preferred wine in the 2011 “Domaine de la Romanee Conti vs the World” Blind Tasting held in Singapore with wine journalists and connoisseurs, he shows humble acceptance and gives a quiet nod to the forces of nature. He has journeyed 37 years creating a vineyard where nature makes the wine with just a light touch here and a gentle nudge there from his magic hand.
Phillip Jones’s thoughts on ProCork – “The ProCork cork has been a faultless closure for us since we commenced using it for the 2007’s.’’
Oxygen Transmission Rate
and
ProCork’s Selective Membrane
ProCork is determined to eliminate cork OTR defects in high grade batches of ProCork destined to care for cellared wines. A combination of techniques are used but ultimately the selective permeability of the proprietary ProCork membrane controls the OTR to that of the best natural cork.
OTR measurements were carried out by AWRI in their Independent 2010 Red Wine Closure Trial. The results quantified of the high spread of natural cork OTR that has been long suspected. Screw cap (tin liner) was found to have OTR below the range of cork and this was also long suspected. An interesting result was that the natural ProCork (natural cork with a selective membrane coating) occupied the lower half of the natural cork OTR range which would align its performance with the better performing natural corks. The OTR results in the trial correlated with the Brown colour, Cooked/stewed fruit and Bruised apple sensory results and here cork displayed more of these oxidized characters than ProCork and Screw Cap.
It also supports the belief that the evolution of wine sensory characteristics post-bottling is driven primarily by the closure OTR where low OTR leads to retention of fresh fruit characters and high OTR leads to the development of cooked and stewed fruit characters, brown colours and eventually oxidized characters. It should also be noted that very low OTR values can lead to the development of reductive attributes in the wine.
Contact: Dr Gregor Christie
Ave Santiago 84
Rio Meao Portugal www.procorktech.com info@procorktech.com