For many wine lovers out there, something just doesn’t sound right about this statement.

Screw caps, or ‘Stelvin enclosures’ to us industry folk (and the Alcan Packaging Company responsible for their creation) have recently been revolutionizing the wine business. Consumer, vendor, critic - everybody has something to say about them. Now, thanks to a question from my sister Gillian, so do I.

Over the past five years or so we’ve been seeing more and more screw caps on wine bottles. Starting with whites on the low end and slowly working their way up the pricing ladder and across the color divide as they break through their stigma, now they are found on wines from many parts of the world, at many different price points. Some people love them, others are filled with loathing. Many wonder what the hell the controversy is all about.

While there are many ways of addressing the issue, in terms of cost, marketing, and micro-oxygenation, for me it’s mostly about tradition. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m somewhat of a wine purist; I was attracted to to the world of wine because of its long history and rich traditions. It’s often easy to mistake custom for necessity, and sometimes difficult to draw a line between the two - cork has so long been the closure of choice for winemakers the world over that many don’t realize there are alternatives. And, due to the screw cap’s long association with cheap wine, there are more who would never consider changing.

Cork is a natural material, easy to produce and completely biodegradable. It allows for minuscule amounts of oxygen to pass through, permitting a wine to breathe and settle over time, which screw caps do not. However, cork is also susceptible to what’s now generally referred to as ‘corking,’ or ‘cork taint,’ which has become so common that the terms are now used to describe any defect in wine. Flawed cork can allow too much oxygen through, leading to oxidized wine, but in reality ‘corked’ refers specifically to the the presence of trichloroanisole (TCA), which is naturally occurring in many cork trees. When TCA is released into the wine, it imparts the smell (and sometimes the flavor) of, well, wet cardboard. While sometimes subtle, other times it’s not - putting your nose in a glass of seriously corked wine smells like walking into a basement shortly after a flood. It’s not exactly bad for you, but can definitely detract from wine’s hedonistic pleasure .

Obviously, lower quality cork carries with it a the higher risk of defects, and as the wine market has grown exponentially the supply of quality cork has diminished correspondingly. As well as justifying alternate enclosures for wine bottles, this snowball effect is also creating a greater need for them, and we will only see more and more cork alternatives in the coming years.

Now let’s be honest here - I’m a romantic. Aesthetically, I will always prefer the presentation of cork in a bottle of wine, especially expensive wine with a history behind it. For me the inherent risk of corking is one of the things that makes wine special; it’s alive inside the bottle, and things can go wrong. Financial matters aside I think there is something beautiful about buying wine while knowing that there is always a chance of defect… loving it enough that one is willing to keep making sacrifices in the effort to enjoy that which is truly extraordinary.

However, I don’t expect everybody to share this belief, and frankly, I wouldn’t really want them to. I was attracted to wine not only because of it’s history but also because of its future - as the world changes, so does the world of wine. It can be appreciated on many different levels, consumed in innumerable situations, and purchased at wildly variant prices. I’ve become completely used to screw caps on fresh white wines and inexpensive reds; they make a great deal of sense from the perspective of both consumer and producer. Why take a risk with a wine that will be sold for $10 and consumed immediately? The winery would rather not lose any of their production, and the buyer wants to get their money’s worth.

So, don’t criticize the screw cap. Just don’t put one on my Châteauneuf.

March 22nd, 2008 | vino