A horrendous storm blew through our village and into the City of Bordeaux on Saturday leaving a trail of destruction and no electricity on Sunday

However I was relieved to see everything calm and back to warm spring weather this morning for the 2009 Laithwaite Sauvignon bottling.

Once again the 2009 proves to yet again to be an all rounder of a vintage with this stunning crisp Sauvignon showing perfect balance in elegance and ripeness on both the nose and palate. You just have to get your nose in this!

We had lunch today with our new cork supplier. The cork debate never ceases and is a very technical and important subject, due to this being the closure that will ultimately preserve or not preserve your livelihood forever! I have an appreciation for both screw caps and different corks if used on the correct styles of wine.

We all prefer a natural cork but my problem, and many others agree, is the number of corked wines that occur with natural corks. It can be up to 5% or more of all wine bottled which is a hell of a lot when you are making small volume handcrafted wines as we are here at the Chai.

We feel strongly that certain wines need to be closed with cork so that the wine is allowed breath ever so slightly to enhance and evolve the wine so it is at its best for the consumer.

Today though I had a rather different tasting as JMS and I blind-tasted through some identical, high-quality older wines corked with both top grade cork and the new, so-called DIAM cork on the same day. Needless to say I found all the mysterious DIAM corked wines tasted better and fresher. The DIAM cork is on the left in the photograph.

The solution to all our problems has been found! And it comes from the DIAM cork, a natural real cork with a 100% guarantee to be free of off taints and odours. The DIAM cork starts out it life as whole natural cork but it is chopped up, treated with a chemical free, super-critical CO2 process and put back together again.

The end result is not quite as aesthetical as a normal ‘whole’ cork but if I was a customer I would be very pleased with the DIAM guarantee indeed! Look out for the discreet DIAM logo on the cork as proof!

For more information visit: http://www.diam-cork.com/


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