Brews & Eats
Wine Column: We need to talk about cork... by Darren Willmott

To cork or not to cork? - that is the question.

The bottle closure may seem an indiscriminate means to an end, merely a way of keeping bits from falling into the bottle or stopping the air turning the wine to vinegar, but the last 20 years have seen screw caps gaining in popularity as a simple and reliable seal. 

Cork has been dethroned as the de facto king of wine closures. In its heyday the cork seal was a revolution to the wine industry, replacing the humble oil soaked rag.  Along with advances in glass production giving sturdier bottles available in mass volume, it was the birth of wine as we know it today, now able to survive longer than a few months at a time. In the mid-1970s both trade and customers started to complain that more and more wines were developing damp and musky characteristics.  Full diagnosis was a long way off but cork got the blame, giving rise to the condition known as ‘corked’ wine.

Sometimes mistakenly interpreted as bits of cork splitting into the bottle during the opening process, ‘corked’ wine actually refers to spoiling chemical compounds that survive the boiling process required to make a cork ready for use.  For the first time in several hundred years it was time to look for an alternative. So, why persevere with cork? Cork branding was originally used when a wine was chateau bottled; a quality seal that what you were drinking had not been watered down or adulterated in any way. 

The popping of a cork is the soundtrack of a celebration, but with screw cap there is no such majesty - you simply twist and go. Part of the problem is that cork has been a key closure for centuries, and no one loves wine history and tradition more than the French who have been extremely resistant towards alternative closures.  For many, France is wine and wine is France, so if they’re not budging then neither are they. Others in support of cork are the Portuguese where there is a whole industry surrounding its production. 

Requiring the warm-but-wet growing conditions perfectly provided by the Atlantic they have 34% of the world’s cork forest and produce over 50% of the world’s cork needs.

The screw cap was pioneered and remains extremely popular in Australia and New Zealand where 80% and 95% (respectively) of their wines utilise the closure.  Their clean and fruity wines were among the first to expose the issue of cork taint and, free from the ties of tradition, were at the forefront of finding an alternative. In its favour, screw cap production is a lot easier than the labour intensive bark stripping of the Quercus suber tree and costs half as much to make. 

The sterile seal also has no chance of bringing in any foreign compounds. First used for wine in the early 1960s, the ‘unknown’ prevented a wholesale shift to screw cap, specifically the notion that wine could age as gracefully as it could under cork.   Subsequent trials have shown no discernible differences and screw cap can in fact keep a wine fresher in youth. 

As such it remains a stalwart of cheaper wines or those meant to be drunk in the next few years. It’s extremely rare that anyone would choose to buy or drink a wine due to the way it was sealed, but for me the one big benefit of screw cap is that when you are out and about without a corkscrew, you can still get at the good stuff. Cheers! l Follow Darren on https://vinesight.me/tag/wine-blogging