Three types of wine corks and stoppers

 

I looked at these three 'corks' tken out of bottles at a meeting of the Central London Wine Society. What were they?

Members of the public tend to use the word cork for any kind of bottle stopper. Some people don't know there is any difference. Others know there is a difference but cannot identify real cork.

 The top cork stopper is the kind used for Champagne and sparkling wine. It has a broad top to withstand pressure from the bubbles below.

The middle 'cork', or rather a stopper, is a synthetic. Advantages, cheaper, and can be reused.

Any disadvantages? Not supporting the Portuguese wine industry, jobs and growing of attractive, traditional cork trees.

The lowest cork in my photograph has holes or bubbles. That is how you know it is made from real cork.

Composite cork is made up of fragments of cork, like chipboard. One advantage is that they can be sterilised which reduces the risk of cork taint.

They are also cheaper to make and sell for less so they are easiest to sell.

Diam is a maker of cork closures.

Any disadvantage?  The non traditional stoppers fit tight so they can be harder to get out of the bottle.

Diam-cork.com

Screw caps are convenient. Quick and easy to remove by the consumer. No need of a corkscrew.

Even if every bottle produced this year, or next, had screw caps, cork stoppers would still be around, needing corkscrews. Why? Because, if you have very old bottles in storage, they will have cork closures.

Corks are prestigious, so they are often used for the more expensive wines.

Make A DIY Dolls' House, Shadowbox Or Toy Theatre When Travelling

 Stuck indoors overseas on a rainy day? Make a DIY dolls' house or theatre. For your children who are with you or your host's children. Or to send a video to amuse the children or grandchildren back home. Or just for yourself. Or to create a group of local people who like crafts.

Dolls' House

For the dolls' house you can start with the shell of the house from a shoe box and lid. Use a packing box if you have moved house. An alternative is a paper or fabric tote bag.

You can add a roof top, or attic, and two side wings made from cereal boxes, whole or cut diagonally. 

Windows 

Make windows from window envelopes.  Or transparent plastic bags. Or shower caps.

Pelmets

Make a pelmet by printing a pattern such as a border, or use a scrap of wrapping paper from gifts, or the edges of a white or gold paper doiley..

Curtains

Make net curtains from an old or new flannel, or paper tissue (Kleenex). Cut white paper for nets, such as half height cafe curtains. 

Carpets, Bedding & Soft Furnishing

Dolls

Little people and dogs can be cut from newspapers, magazines or advertising leaflets. You can lean them or paste them against the walls. For example, by the front door greeting arrivals, back view waiting to be let in.  Add morer looking sideways out of the windows. 

To make them freestanding, glue or sellotape paper or card, or cut the neat fold of a Xmas card, or birthday card or postcard or address card (your own spares, or a shop whose address you already added to your phone so you no longer need the card. 

Furniture

In the hotel or restaurant bar look for

Paper parasols.

Corks - for tables, stools, and doll bodies.

Champagne corks for tables, table lamps, or cyclinder dolls with heads. 

Sandwich markers stuck into corks make flags outside the front door or entrance.

Useful Discarded Items

White doileys make carpets, table cloths, pelmets, bedding. 

From Xmas or party crackers, the concertina paper hats make roof tiles, pelmets, drapes or duvets.

Match boxxes or small boxes with bathroom shower caps make suitcases, boxes, beds, cots, small cars  or boats or trains. 

Used coffee capsules make flower pots. If you can trust yourself and your children not to spill things, take off the foil top and you have realistic soil.

Toy Theatre

A large cardboard box can make a table- top theatre, like the ones you used to see at the sea-side for Punch and Judy. 

Chopsticks can be used to suspend marionettes.

Magazines and adversing leaflets can be cut up to show stick figues, shadow puppets, and plates of food. 

Toilet roll cardboard cylinders an be made into columns, the bodies of stuck figures, or to conceal pop-up puppets.

Old gloves or children's bath gloves can be cut and painted or embroidered to make five, finger-puppet figures.

Simple Shadow People

If you are in a restaurant or bedroom and don't have time but need to entertain children, or adults, consider making shadows on walls. You can have yourself or the most extravert prson as the entertainer. Or go round in a circle asking each person to give a one person hand character a description, name, action or line of continued conversation.  

Like Paddington Bear, your imaginary characters or monsters can travel to or from your current destination and home town.  A vertical hand makes a door or wall or barrier or border. A horizontal hand can make the road or the sea or raincloud. A bunched hand makes the rising or setting sun. 

Thumb People

Two hands with thumbs raised make two characters talking. No time for shadows? Just create two thumb characters to entertain a child. Or you have a thumb as the adult, and the child raises their thumb as the responding child.

Silhouette Shadow Puppet - Shadowgraphy

You can also use your hands to make shadow puppets on a plain colour wall. Have two contrasting figures made by different people as actors, talking to each other, The simplest is just to use your thumb as the lower jaw, and the rest of your fingers as the rest of the head.

Your hand can make wave movements to suggest a plane taking off, then conntinuing, then landing. 

Or a sailing boat on heavy seas.

 Once when we were the last in a restaurant with children after a birthday party, we asked the owner to dim the lights so that we could demonstrate a rabbit shadow. The restaurant owner and two of the waiters were delighted and showed us their own versions of shadow animals talking in other languages and singing.

Whether you wish to spend hours creating a box of ingenius items, with an elaborate song, or improvisation, or just to turn off the lights and make a shadow game after dinner for a few moments you have lots of opportunity to make use of and enjoy every minute or your holiday time.

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowgraphy_(performing_art)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hand_games

See earlier post on March 3rd.

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Blind Tasting Wines, With a British Fish & Chip Supper

I went to a blind wine tasting at a wine club.

At wine shows, only experienced drinkers try to guess in contests oor people who hope that randomly they might win a free bottle.

 How do you blind taste a wine and guess grape and the country of origin?

1 Colour

Usually darker means older

2 Aroma

3 County

You can check which grapes are grown in each region and allowed to be used in a local wine with a specific coutnry or region or vineyard and winery origin.

4 Bottle

Darker bottles protect wines from light. Especially white wines. But customers don't like brown bottles so bottles are made greek occasioally blue.

5 Bottle cap

Some countries favour corks. Others favour screw caps.  

We went to a blind wine tasting in St Albans.

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Peter enjoying a guess the wine blind tasting evening at wine tasting club in St Albans. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Peter at a blind wine tasting, guess the wine, four whites and four red, with a small wine tasting measure for each person, and covered bottles. Best guess wins a bottle. Tie breaker is guess the price of each bottle. you hand in your sheet with your guesses and your name. After the winnders are announced you can take the covers off the bottles. 

We had a fish and ship supper, a pre-selected choice of three meals, two kinds of fish, hake or bream, or vegan, with chips or vegetable, served in  box, by a catering company.

Fish and chips. Photo from Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Many cities have a wine tasting club or group, or wine and dine group. Wine importers and shops can arrange wine dinners or attend an event where they bring wines for you to taste and compaare and buy a bottle or a case at a discount. 

This can be free, or subsidised, or paid for. 

Finding a Wine Tasting Group

IYou can find wine clubs and events for fund raising for groups. 

Starting A Wine Tasting Group

If you cannot find one, you could start your own. Over fifties and retired people, look for a group such as at U3A (Univeristy of the third age for the retired in the UK),. Alternatively, worlwide, you can find one or start one through Meetup.

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Useful Websites

https://www.meetup.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Albans

Protective Hats For Hot weather, and cold weather, especially folding caps

 Protective Hats

Australians have hats with corks. The corks are to keep insects at bay. In places like beaches where you have swarms of flies around your hair and face. You don't want to keep waving them away. Your hand might be busy holding a torch, or walking stick, or writing. 

But I find corks bobbing in front of my eyes and hitting my forehead are a nuisance.

Chinese Traditional Folding Hats

The giant brim hat which pack flat have a circular wire which can be folded half way into a figure or eight and then one loop is folded over the other one. Each time you move them, they are liable to spring open. 

Hat Pouches

So you need to pack them in a right size pouch. A zipped or drawstring bag which is large enough but not too bulky for the jacket pocket or heavy in the suitcase. 

Verdict - For Amusement Only

The trouble is that the circular hats spring up, open up, unexpectedly. when you unpack. The hat might hit your spectacles. Or just give you a nasty shock.

Sporting and Fashion Folding Caps

I like a folding hat with a brim and neck protection.

I have these in pink, red, pale blue and navy blue. The brand I have bought most is OutdoorSport. 

The Folding Brim Cap

For daytime, I added a newly delivered cash on delivery cap in navy blue. The cap is brand Outdoor Sport which is printed large across the crown, from the brim towards the back.

Why did I order this cap? I ordered two because there was a special offer for buying two. I already have this style in red and pink.t Folding is handy when you take it off in a restaurant for lunch or dinner and want to stuff it hurriedly into an already full bag without breaking the bag's zip.

These hats come in pale blue, dark navy blue, and other colours, depending on who you order from. The large men's sizes cost 32 dollars. That is beyond my budget. The first one I bought was sold in one colour only, pink, from one of those all bargain homeware stores, maybe Japan Home or similar, at under twenty dollars. I had looked online and bought one in red. So when I saw two for 29 dollars I ordered immediately. 

Cash on Delivery

Cash on delivery was not an option I wanted. I can see that saves the supplier paying a credit card company. The buyer in theory is assured that they can't be charged for goods which never turn up, get delivered to the wrong address, or get left on the doorstep and stolen.

However, I was afraid that the goods might arrive when I was out or unavailable. What if the delivery was delayed until I had gone on holiday or travelling? What if I was out shopping or having dinner or at other meetings? What if I was in the shower or on the phone or on a Zoom call and did not hear the knock at the door.

I was relieved when the parcel was delivered. Two hats in one almost flat envelope. Tiny. I was asked for money. The deliver said I Could not open the envelope until I had paid. I could feel the hat brim. I paid and started opening it immediately to be sure I had been sent the right item. Yes!

The pale blue is an awkward colour. The blue does not match anything else, not my dresses, blouses, scarves. I wish manufacturers would make hats and jackets or dresses or shirts to match. 

My dream is to run a clothing website selling co-ordinated clothes. There is already a white store. Why don't swimsuit makers and swimhat makers co-ordinate?

Useful Websites

A circular brim foldable hat

In pink (matt coral), blue (bold bright - but hard to match), orange (with touch of red), red.

Price 32.02 SGD (Singapore dollars) posted from the USA, takes Paypal. 10% off for buying a second hat.

https://lined.store/products/%F0%9F%94%A52nd-50--off%F0%9F%94%A5uv-protection-foldable-sun-hat

Cap with pull out sides to brim 

(They say large brim, stretchable). No crown to the hat. 

The cost is more, 42 dollars reduced from 74. (Mother's Day sales. 20 April 2022 on Facebook.)

Colours: black, pink, gray, beige. The black is most practical. The pink is a pale colour.

https://1001480325.mtjfc.com/122?utm_content=23849891491800147&from=facebook&adset_id=23849891494270147&ad_id=23849891494430147&opt_id=541&fbclid=IwAR0bVbsjxXGTksv9c9jXtw2rYO6pSzjX4Og30bfh3Ad9mk7Yd7QpP1bTOqE

Buy a dozen to give to all your friends and family. At under five dollars each, must multiple order, some offers from Alibaba are fro ten or more, others for as little as two.

Plus 7.25 US shipping.

Also single samples at ten dollars. (Plus postage)

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-quality-uv-sun-hard-hat_62140970949.html?spm=a2700.7724857.normal_offer.d_title.263a4ee1oiLJAy

White

https://www.thewhitecompany.com/uk/

Simple souvenirs - free eye masks, pens and corks

Souvenirs
Children's kits, playing cards and postcards (from airlines and restaurants).
Airline socks, masks, ear plugs and bags.
Hotel sewing kits.
Pens with advertising names.
Wine bottle corks.

Wine bottle corks
1Use as markers in the garden. Stick one on the top of a thin stake and write the plant name in waterproof felt tip pen.
2 Frame corks in an old frame which has lost its (broken) glass. Stick the corks on the backing. Fill any gaps with corks cut in half or strips of cork. (Or ribbon.)
3 Stick corks onto a plate and add a clock mechanism (which you can buy on line).

Clothes
1 Baseball caps with advertising name.
After the holiday is over, if you don't want the name showing or want to change colour, cover the wording with a ribbon. Use the same ribbon on your coat or jacket to make a co-ordinated outfit.
2 Advertising t-shirts. Dye black.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer.

Souvenir Corks, Labels, Bottles, Cases and Posters

I save empty wine bottles from restaurants on my travels.

Souvenir Corks
I have corks stuck onto a picture frame. You don't need a glass cover. You just let the corks project. 

That reminds me. I have a picture frame which has no glass. (Somebody else broke the glass.) I was wondering what to do with. I'll use it to frame corks.  I can create something new and personal and get rid of the clutter of a broken frame and lots of corks lying around. 

The other thing you can do with corks is put them in a carafe or see-through empty bottle, the larger the better, or a goldfish bowl or clear vase. I've seen a display like this at The Wine Society.


Other uses for corks are suspended from an Australian style cowboy hat to ward off flies. Or as a joke hat for a fancy dress party, or hanging from a lamp shade.

Dozens more projects from table tops, coasters, pinboards, jewellery holders, drawer pulls, plant put holders, bottle and four glasses stand - see them on Pinterest. Just google what can I do with old corks and you'll find lots more.

https://uk.pinterest.com/ladyandhershoe/1001-uses-for-wine-bottle-corks/

Use corks as replacement handles for old knives. 

http://yarnigras.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/ironcraft-28-and-recipe.html

If you don't have enough corks for a project, on eBay you can buy sets of 50 corks.

Labels
Souvenir labels can be floated off and stuck into a book, for example one with self-sticking transparent pages.

The supermarket size souvenir shops at wineries in California sell books designed for storing labels. If you are on a budget or having a lets clear clutter day, you can make a wine label book from any scrapbook. to make a suitable cover, you could photography one of the labels and print the copy for the front cover. Or use one of the labels for the front cover. Or print out a suitable label just using a fancy typeface and black ink and a word such as wines.

Alternatively label the cover with years and places where you travelled to drink the wines, whether it's within a mile of your home or all around the world.

Bottles
In the 1960s it was popular to save Mateus Rose Bottles to re-use as table lamps. You could buy a cheap kit to stick in the neck of the bottle. Just add a bulb and buy a cheap lamp from a budget store.

You could store bottles across the top of kitchen cupboards. 

If you have a Corvavin to preserve wines, empty bottles are handy for decanting leftover wine and re-bottling. You can use half bottles to save half bottle leftovers in a bottle with less air so it lasts longer. Re-cork it with one of those cork stoppers with a horizontal hat. 

Making Labels
Make a new label from your printer or simply stick on an address label with the name of the wine and the new date. Float the label off the old bottle and ra-apply it. Or get a photo of the wine from a wine catalogue from your nearest wine shop or a general supermarket such as Tesco or Marks or their weekly newspaper. Cut the picture of the bottle out of the magazine, with or without the text describing the wine.

These are on the cellar wall of The Sampler, in London.

Cases
Packing cases from prestigious or favourite houses. You can stick them on the wall unframed. Or frame them.

This one I saw at the Rose pub in Fulham, London.

People most likely to get wine boxes are pubs, bars and restaurants. Boxes can be used for decoration, for flower pots. You might be able to get somebody to give you one.

Collage
Wine labels could be used as a collage for a table top, for a home or business, for a wine bar or conservatory or cellar. Even to cover a suitcase or handbag.

Inspiring Sketching
A stored bottle is useful for inspiring a still life drawing or painting. You could even paint a mural in your kitchen or cellar, copying the bottles of the labels, the corks and the packing cases.



Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer,