Of Corks and Screwcaps

If you’re a wine lover, surely you’ve heard of the great cork controversy. Corks are routinely sanitized with chlorine. Chlorine can react with mold on corks to form a compound called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), which can spoil a wine. In the best case, TCA merely robs a wine of all its fruit. In the worst case, the whole wine smells of musty paper, just like those old newspapers in your attic, and tastes just as bad. Other chloroanisoles and a bromoanisole are formed in the same way and are also responsible for tainting wine.

Receptivity to these anisoles varies greatly among individuals. I have a friend in the business who once opened a bad bottle and I told him it was corked from across the room. Even with his nose buried in the glass, he had a hard time smelling the cork taint. And I know another guy in the business who claims wines are corked that I can’t detect.

In any case, wines are being spoiled by these chemicals and the largest vector for contamination is corks. Various factions claim that this spoilage is acceptable or wholly unacceptable depending on their points of view. However, the issue has spurred the industry to look at alternative closures.

For several years, many wineries used synthetic corks, which fell out of favor. From our perspective at the restaurant, they were impossible to remove when first inserted into the bottles and then after a few months, they became so loose that they pushed right into the bottles at the mere touch of the corkscrew. Once these plastic plugs loosen, wines oxidize very quickly.

And, many other alternative closures have been proposed, tested, and found similarly wanting. The most promising “new” closure is one we have had for decades, namely the screw cap. Naturally, the screw cap suffers the stigma of having been the closure of choice for a lot of really poor jug wine for decades. Beyond the stigma, there is sentimental attachment to corks, comfort in the time-honored ritual of opening the bottle, and that wonderful aural stimulus—the unmistakable pop that we wine lovers adore—that anticipates the first sip.

All my traditional likes for corks are immediately overwhelmed when that first whiff or sip of a newly uncorked bottle is ruined by cork taint. This, more than anything, has convinced me that it is time for us all to move on and get used to screw caps for wines that do not need to be aged. The jury is still out on how wines age long-term under screw cap versus under cork. I worry that the wines will not age as gracefully under screw cap, but the evidence is not there to support my worry.

Still, from my perspective as a restaurateur, we don’t buy wines to age—very few of us can afford to tie up that much working capital—we buy wines to drink now. And I think most consumers do as well. In our business, initially the servers bemoaned the loss of the cork because it removed a lot of the tableside theatrics and romance. And, secretly, I am sure they were concerned for their tips: screwtops have not affected their tips in the least. Moreover, for by-the-glass pours, there is nothing easier for us than a screw cap. Unscrew, pour, rescrew, back in the fridge. And for customers who want to take a partial bottle home, the screw cap won’t leak all wine all over the car on the trip home. And the bottle will fit better in the refrigerator door without the cork poking out of the top.

Any trip to the grocery store or wine shop will show that the screw cap is inevitable. Already most New Zealand wines are under screw cap as are many lower end table wines. Australia and South America will soon have the majority of their wines under screwcap. On the one hand, I applaud this move. And on the other, I sure am going to miss that “pop!”