Assembling the wirehoods/
The wirehood you see today first made its appearance at the instigation of the Maisons de Champagne at the start of the 60s with the arrival of the first automatic machines. Its role is to ensure that the cork is shaped and fitted to champagne and sparkling wine bottles. The wire hood is the result of assembling 3 parts:
– the belt made from soft galvanised or lacquered steel wire, which fits freely into the cage eyelets, and is assembled with a double twist.
– the body or cage made of two or four wires assembled by twisting, with eyelets rolled towards the inside or outside so that the belt can be fitted through them.
– a tinplated wirehood cap
Carefully selected high-grade and raw materials/
Our suppliers play a crucial role in manufacturing our wire hoods.
In order to satisfy our clientele’s demands, all our products are produced in Le Muselet Valentin’s workshops using carefully selected raw materials from European suppliers who ensure us consistent quality.
Our suppliers are selected by focusing on qualitative criteria in particular: quality materials, support with product development, and sharing our values in terms of client satisfaction.
Reinforced Quality Control/
Wirehoods are used on automatic machines, so ensuring that the mechanic and dimensional properties are consistent is essential for our clients.
In order to guarantee the quality of them, quality controls are carried out at each stage of the process:
• on receipt of raw materials
• during manufacture with periodic controls and self-checking
• before packing by visually checking the packet and arranging the legs on all manufactured products. When the wire hoods come out of the machine, they are mechanically stacked one by one in a packet which is held in place by a cardboard rod and placed in a packet inside cardboard or plastic boxes or trays.
The packet’s characteristics are vital factors in ensuring that they pass along our clients’ conveyor belts in an optimal fashion and that the wire hoods are distributed properly.
The length, hold, flexibility, and stability are the key characteristics which are checked when they pass through the control elbows.
Large-sized models/
Wirehoods for corking the largest bottle models – from Jeroboam to Melchizedek – are manufactured completely by hand.
In the manual forming workshop, the process for manufacturing wire hoods consists of: forming the belt, assembling the cross-brace and the belt, and assembling the cage and the wirehood plate.
