John LaBella wrote:
> During a recent trip to Italy I spent some time with some home brewers
> of wine.
> Their consensus was that corks were becoming quite inferior construction
> materials etc.
> They disliked the plastic corks saying they were too difficult for the
> home winemaker to use effectively/easily.
>
> Their solution was to use crown caps (like beer/pop bottles).
>
> - Perhaps something to look into?

My Italian uncle who died in 1976 between the crush and the press of our
annual wine making, always bottled using recycled Pabst Blue Ribbon
quart bottles (dark glass) with caps. All these years later I am still
using his crusher and press and I still have all of his bottles and the
capper even though I currently use wine bottles and corks. Perhaps he
was right.

Steve - half Italian home brewer.