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I don't know if you have ever heard of King Kanute? He was a medieval king who was so confident of his complete power over all things, that he was convinced to take his throne to a beach at low tide and order the sea not to come back in. History has it, that despite ranting and raving against the inevitable, he took a serious dunking and wound up wading back to the beach a broken man. |
In the wine industry, it seems that screw caps are the tide and middle-aged wine drinkers, or oenophiles, as we like to be called, are the wannabe King Kanutes, trying to turn back the tide. Most folks love the sound of a popping cork at their table side. All that ceremony, the pop, the smell of the cork, that first sip of wine. Hang on, where did all that pomp and circumstance come from? Well, the tasting is more about checking if your wine is “corked” than anything else. After all, they don't bring out your steak and give you a sample before you get the meal!
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| The Anatomy of a Screw Cap |
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Notice the complex seal and the industrial looking quality. This is from Conundrum 2003, they recently switched over to screw caps from corks. A blended white wine. It's modestly expensive at $23, but has a really complex and fruity taste. |
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There are a number of economic reasons why corks are on their way out. Wine consumption has soared in the last decade of so and it's proving harder and harder to get good quality corks for wine bottles from a diminishing natural supply. Estimates vary, but most authorities accept that between 8% and 10% of all wines are effected by TCA (see sidebar) or “corked”. So, this gives wine producers two problems. First corks are getting more expensive and second they are spoiling at least 8% of their product. Given the competitive nature of the wine business, this is clearly a situation that the larger and more efficient producers are seeking to fix.
The first successful replacement for natural corks have been synthetic or plastic corks. These vary from the very hard plastic plugs used in low-end wines to complex double layered corks (agglomerate) in more expensive brews. They actually work well, are reasonably well tolerated by the wine drinking public and seem a pretty good solution to creating a more stable and reliable replacement for good-ol' natural cork.
However, there are a number of issues with these synthetics. First, they sometimes are almost impossible to remove (while it may be fun to watch your wine waiter getting a hernia pulling out a plastic cork, what a disaster if he or she can't get it out!). Plastic corks lack the mechanical properties of real cork in terms of flexibility. Conversely, they are very hard to reinsert for subsequent storage of any remaining wine (not a problem for me!). There are also questions about long term reliability and whether or not the corks would eventually allow oxygen in and wine out. Perhaps the most disturbing problem is the issue of “plastic taint”, which apparently can occur after a period of storage. Somehow this seems worse than the odd bottle ruined by a bad cork. |
| Plenty of Choice |
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There's plenty of choice -- some examples: Wolf Blass Gold Label, Ca'del Solo Big Red House and Conundrum Table Wine. |
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So...like King Kanute and his tide we're back to the ever encroaching screw caps. They have such a dreadful market image. “Screw cap”, let me see now...cheap wine in brown paper bags on park benches – not a compelling image. Perhaps you remember the last attempt to introduce screw caps in the 70's. This was a campaign led by cheap and frankly nasty wines, not a good place to start.
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| Screw Caps Everywhere |
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They seek him here, they seek him there. Screw caps are everywhere you can buy wine.
To name just a few brands that have screw caps in their line-up: Bishop's Peak, Hogue Cellars, Beringer, Bonny Doon, Penfolds, Wynns Coonawarra Estate and many more. Of course, they are not hard to find, just wander 'round your local liquor store and it's easy to see which have caps and which don't. In restaurants, they are usually pretty careful to either mark their wine list or tell you that the bottle that you ordered has a cap.
Bishop's Peak Edna Valley
2002 Syrah
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The Australian and New Zealand wine producers are on the cutting edge of wine production. They have large vineyards, big well known brands, produce very large quantities of wine and are going after the average consumer with upmarket products at reasonable prices. Screw cap usage is up from 0% in May 2001 to 15% in December 2002 among New Zealand wines. This has a great deal to do with the Australian and New Zealand wine drinkers. They are young, open-minded and very interested in the best quality product. Today it's estimated that over 40% of wine drunk in Australia has a screw cap. They don't seem to carry quite the same stigma as in the US or Europe.
Remember it's the wine industry driving this tide. One Californian producer told us that he could cut his per-case costs by $12 and reduce tainting to practically zero. He is very pleased to be able to send out a product with a much more predictable cost and dependable quality. He certainly won't turn back now and if the sales of his screw cap wine is anything to go by, who could blame him?
By-the-way, these are not you father's screw caps we are talking about here. Most of us only see screw caps on bottles of kid's drinks or other immediate-use food products. These are a very different animal. If you open a bottle of wine with a screw cap several things are immediately noticeable. First it's a substantial enclosure made of metal. If you peer into the cap you will see the high-tech seal. There are a number of brands and types, but they all feature a complex internal structure with sandwiched materials and flexible seals. The really nice thing is that you can easily screw them back up to save a half bottle for later use.
Would you want to buy a very expensive wine for laying down for long term storage that had screw caps? Well you probably don't have to worry too much yet. The high-end wines are sticking with corks for now. One champagne producer told us that they currently pay up to $5 for a tested, certified natural champagne cork. This is a very significant percentage of the production cost, but something that they don't really want to change unless they have to. In fact there really aren't any good synthetic champagne corks that we know of. Perhaps popping a champagne cork is going to be the last bastion of the tradition.
Ultimately, it seems they screw caps are coming and coming fairly fast. Our Australian friends seem to love them and a new generation of wine drinkers here in the US seem to have no prejudices. The European market has been more resistant than the US to moving away from natural corks (oh and guess who grows most of the world's supply). To date none of the high-end French producers have embraced screw caps in any meaningful way.
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| What does "corked" mean? |
Corked wine usually refers to the
TCA (2,4,6-Trichloroanisole) in wine. It comes from the presence of chlorine in the cork. Typically a cork takes 12 months to mature, during which time it is washed and steamed to make it more elastic and remove impurities. If there is even a trace of chlorine then TCA can form when the chlorine reacts with mold already growing on the cork. The mold can also react to out-gassing from certain plastics and other pollutants. The human palate is very sensitive to TCA and can detect as low as six parts per trillion. Damage to the wine industry annually from Cork Taint is estimated to be approximately $10 billion worldwide. |
| What Does "Corked" wine taste like? |
| If a wine is "corked", it has a sour, moldy smell. It tastes unpleasant, with a distinct flat flavor. My personal description is cardboard soaked in vinegar (don't ask). Some people describe it as having a musty smell and taste. Basically it's foul. The hardest thing is when it's a border-line case. Be sure to ask your sommelier or wine waiter to taste it with you if you are at all unsure. That's what that fancy little silver bowl hanging around the sommelier's neck is for. |
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| That leaves two final problems. What do we do with all those expensive cork screws we purchased and how can we replace that wonderful “pop” of a cork being withdrawn with a crunching noise of a screw cap? |
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