Cork Verses Screwcap

Romancing The Cork!

Ah yes you're sitting in a wonderful restaurant and the sommelier carefully opens that perfect bottle of wine. He gives you the cork and although you’re not really sure what do, you turn it over in your hand and smell it. Next the sommelier pours you “the taste" so that you and you alone can determine if it meets your expectations. The romance of the wine presentation is part of the wine experience. Or is it?

Let’s say when you start to drink it you smell a bad odor that reeks of mold. Worse yet, when you taste the wine you expected to be magnificent, its terrible!!!

Well you’ve just tasted a CORKED WINE!

And you’re not alone, between 3 and 5% of all bottles of wine with natural corks have been spoiled to some degree. To overcome the cork problems some wineries have resorted to using plastic corks. Have you ever tried getting your corkscrew out of one of those plastic corks? On several occasions I had to get pliers and a knife to cut mine out. And putting one back into a bottle, is impossible.

And how about those almost corks, the ones that look like corks but aren’t. Those are agglomerate corks made from granulated cork using FDA approved…glue. Because they are glued together they can leak, which ruins the wine. That’s why they are only meant for wines that are not going to be kept for long periods of time.

So what’s the solution for bad corks? I thought you’d never ask…screwcaps! 

That right screwcaps. I realize the romance of wines is lost when the sommelier unscrews the bottle and hands you the cap. But they are the best way to protect the wine and insure you’ll get what the winery meant you to drink.  

And while everyone thinks of jug wine when it comes to screwcaps, more wineries are turning to them to insure their wine's integrity. I recently looked at our wine cabinet and found that 25% of ours had screwcaps.

As wineries realize that the public will accept their wines with screwcaps, more of them will use this simple solution to protecting their wines. So the next time you reach for that bottle, don’t hesitate if it has a screw cap.

The romance is sharing a great bottle of wine and not how it’s opened or sealed!  

   

Cheers!!

Harold 

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