Wine Enthusiast Magazine
SubscribeJust when you think the world is becoming more enlightened about the stopper on your wine bottle, something happens to show how hard and how long the struggle will be to get over corks. Recently I met a nice couple in the publishing business, apparently affluent, apparently sophisticated, apparently in their late 50s, but he at least was apparently a cork snob.
We were discussing barrels, oak alternatives (chips), winemaking techniques, grape growing practices, and marketing topics including corks, synthetics and screwcaps, products that they call closures in industry jargon.
Screwcaps have come a long way from the cream sherry days, I told him, and they’re working great on not only New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and California rose, but on hiqh-quality, expensive red wines, too. He reacted like I’d just brought Nancy Pelosi into the steam room at the Bohemian Club (although I’m not sure they have one).
“I’ll never buy a wine with a screwcap,” he said in more or less the same tone an interior designer would use to reject linoleum as a floor covering. One-on-one debate is not my strong suit. I did put up a protest, talked about Cigare Volante and Plumpjack and vaguely referenced studies that I couldn’t recall the details of. But he didn’t listen very long, made an excuse and walked away without making eye contact again.
How can people get so emotional about this? It’s a closure, a cap. Historically, everything in a bottle had a cork closure: medicine, herbs, perfume, probably sarsaparilla, red-eye whiskey. I can only assume that when those things switched to metal and plastic caps, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I don’t think the suggestion of doing it would negatively impact anyone’s eye contact.
It’s time to move on. I know I prefer the convenience of a screwcap. When I open the cellar door at 5:30 to grab a bottle, I prefer to grab a screwcap bottle, mostly because it’s easy. But I don’t have too many of them, so it’s usually a corked bottle. When I really, really want a screwcap bottle is when we sit down to dinner, everything is ready, the food is hot, the friends are seated and it’s time for another bottle. I don’t want to find the foil cutter, cut the foil, throw away the foil, put back the foil cutter, find the corkscrew, open the corkscrew, pull the cork (nice pop, though), remove the cork from the screw, close up the corkscrew, put it back in the drawer until finally I’m done after everyone else has taken the medium rare slices and I’m stuck with the accidentally well-done ones.
The cork routine as just described takes 10 steps. With the screwcap bottle, the to-do list is much shorter: 1. Bring bottle to table. 2. Unscrew cap. 3. Pour.
The jury is slightly out, however, on the subject of long aging of wines under screwcap. Jamie Goode of wineanorak.com is one of the best informed bloggers on this topic (“Screwcaps, Plastic or Cork”). Screwcapped wine can develop a stinky, sulfury smell over time, sometimes called a reductive odor, but really you’re smelling mercaptans or stinky thiols. But there are two main technologies for the inner plastic lining of screwcaps, and one of them, called “sarenex only,” allows a slight passage of oxygen into the wine over time and is not linked to the stink. So the solution is there, or at least very near.
The real problem is not the technology but the perception. Older wine drinkers in the US and in at least one study, younger wine drinkers in the UK where consumers in general love twisting open bottles from their various former colonies, heavily prefer corked bottles, especially when giving as gifts or pouring at dinner parties.
It comes down to prejudice and, in a very mild way, fear. Lots of wine drinkers are afraid to buy screwcaps because their friends might be prejudiced against them. The wine trade is afraid to push screwcaps hard for the same reason. But screwcaps are becoming more popular anyway (find a lot of screwcap research and propaganda at nextinwine.com).
I didn’t go into the main reason that wineries began switching to screwcaps, synthetic corks and other alternative closures. “Corky” smelling wine from TCA infection was the original impetus, yet now that’s not a clear cut issue. It turns out that TCA and similar moldy-smelling taints often come from the winery environment, not from the closure (as Tim Patterson elucidates here, in “T’ain’t Necessarily Corks”). But I think that will be another post.
I’d love to hear if anyone has had quality problems with screwcapped bottles, especially anyone who has cellared some screwcaps for two-plus years to see what happened.
Filed under: Closures, Industry Issues
9 Comments
July 11th, 2007 at 10:08:26 AM
Interesting post, Jim. People have come a long way to accepting screw caps for New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs, as you mentioned, but I think it will be a long road before they are accepted for aging quality red wines. It will definitely be an important experiment to see how red wine ages under the cap. That will be the true test.
July 12th, 2007 at 7:31:46 PM
Am I a cork snob? I have lit unscented candles on my dinner table. I use cloth napkins and eat off of china not paper. I always have Pelligrino and dark chocolate at the ready. This is my nightly routine. A bottle with a cork in it, is all part of the ambiance.
Now for a picnic? A screwcap is just fine! (A rose’ of course!)
July 16th, 2007 at 5:32:52 AM
A wonderful candlelight dinner, I was cooking for hours. I prepared the wines, decanted the great red – no TCA hours before.
The lady of my dreams sitting in front of me, getting in the mood, the first course, the second cours, the first wine, the second wine, everything works perfect.
The main dish is on the point – I pour the wine and – it stinks.
Run to the cellar, find a new one? Forget it the mood is gone.
Withe a screwcap I would marry her.
Sorry, but normally nobody opens the bottle on the table. It’s done before – or, from the sommelier on the side table. So it really dorsn’t matter if there is a plopp, a click or a krrrck. A bottle with a cork ruins the ambiance, to often.
Greetings from Vienna.
July 17th, 2007 at 3:08:32 PM
Helmut,
You are so literal! ;) I take my wine out of my wine refridgerator 10 minutes before serving and I still enjoy the ritual. My evening ambiance is always hot, even if the wine is corked, ask my hubby.
July 18th, 2007 at 10:12:41 PM
I can’t resist…what about Voga? For the couple, where she loves the cork, he loves the screw (no pun intended honest). Unscrew the top, pull the cork, drink a glass or two, reapply the cap. Cheers! Voga Delle Venezie Pinot Grigio 2004
July 19th, 2007 at 12:49:10 PM
One of the best kept secrets in the Northwest (Walla Walla) has switched 100% to Screw Top closures….just an FYI. All of the Syrah’s in the Northwest were rated by a 3rd party magazine and tasting panel of judges/experts…their 2 offerings won first and second.
Go Figure!
I’ll live with it….I love their wine.
Get over it people…it’s what’s in the bottle!
August 14th, 2007 at 2:14:58 PM
Hi Jim,
I’m happy that you also address some of the issues surrounding screwcaps in this post (I too read Jamie Goode’s article with interest) but I think that one thing that’s often overlooked by both consumers and the trade is that corks, when good, provide positive flavors to a wine as it develops. It was Paul Draper who first introduced this idea to me at a seminar several years back now, and we’ve found the same thing in the tests that we’ve done at Tablas Creek (I posted about this on our blog a few weeks back).
We do bottle several of our wines in screwcap, and I (like you) often actively look for screwcap-finished wines to drink with meals, but it’s a complicated issue that has been too often reduced to caricatures of one side or the other.
Thanks for shining some light!
All the best,
-Jason
August 14th, 2007 at 6:02:31 PM
Jason: Thanks for fueling the discussion. I’ve heard this concept of the positive flavors of cork, too, most recently from winemaker Mike Richmond of Bouchaine in Carneros. Some bottles of wine are “enhanced” by their corks, was his way of putting it.
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:33:00 PM
I remember a number of years ago when Randall Graham of Bonny Doon announced that he had discover the perfect wine seal – the Supreme Corq. Then after a couple of oxidized vintages, he announced once again that he had discovered the perfect wine seal – the screw cap. I expect any day now that he will discover another perfect seal called natural cork.
I think that in the long run people will discover there is no one perfect seal for all wines all the time.