Part two of Michael Cervin's series on the superstitions and rituals common to the wine industry. See part 1.
Human beings are creatures of habit and routine, of hope and faith, and sometimes that faith comes in the form of a ritual, superstition, or a specific custom they employ during harvest, verasion, fermentation, planning, maybe even passport weekends! So what do winemakers reveal about their own habits, rituals, and superstitions? We asked them to tell us their secrets of how they hope each vintage is the perfect vintage.
IntoWine recently caught up with Cerridwen Wines Winemaker, Deborah Bennett to discuss wine and her thoughts on current trends in the wine industry.
As part of video wine review series, Cult Wines of Crushpad, IntoWine had the delightful opportunity to catch up with Twin Oaks winemaker Mark Weiner to hear his thoughts on the Twin Oaks wines and wine topics in general. Thanks to Mark for chatting. 
I hate synthetic corks and love natural cork or Stelvin screw tops. Synthetic corks are often very difficult to pull out of the bottle. They haven’t yet convinced me that a wine can age as well with a synthetic cork as they can with natural cork or even screw top. To me, synthetic cork indicates cheap wine or a wine that is unlikely to be made in a natural way.
No. Cheap wine indicates cheap wine. There is an issue with corks as a small percentage of them will cause a problem with the wine in the bottle. The most famous of these is TCA which is a bacterium that, while harmless, can cause a wine to smell and taste muted at best or like wet cardboard at worse. Other issues are imperfect seals which cause a wine to age prematurely. 
When a wine is young, it can take years for all the various elements, such as acidity, tanning and fruit to integrate. Until such time the wine can be considered out of balance. However, some young wines can be balanced in the beginning and age gracefully to develop more elegance or character. A lot of the time, a wine professional will refer to a wine as being unbalanced if the wine tastes too strongly of one particular element, very commonly oak, alcohol or acidity.