The experimental wine bottle follows the air flowing through the cellar

The second part that followed, however, is where things got weird. Chanut’s team noticed that, in the first six months, most of the air entering the wine was not imported. The air, it was found, was coming from the cage itself, coming out of the small holes in the cork cells. Nkhata Bay was actually out of the bottle.

Three factors contribute to good ventilation, which changes over time.

This is where the researchers found the first difference between their samples – the sealed plates and the long corks were getting more air because the long corks had more air than the short ones.

The moment the cork became an ingredient rather than just a seal came about four months into the experiment, when it began to interact with the wine.

In the bottles where the sample wine was left in contact with the wood, the water acted as a solvent, releasing phenolic compounds from the cork. These chemicals included gallic acid, ellagic acid, and protocatechuic acid, all of which were found in wine. When they got there, they acted as chemical scavengers who, with the help of metals such as iron and copper, reacted with the air coming out of the exhaust chamber. This caused the oxygen level in the wine to decrease significantly. The garland was emitting chemicals that destroyed the air it had released in the first place.

Eventually, after 15 months, the wine settled into the fourth, long term. Here, air from the outside slowly enters and passes through the corn. In the 18th month, at the end of the experiment, the team noticed that in the bottles sealed with long ropes (above 30 millimeters), the amount of oxygen during this last period was so low that the change was not seen.