Cork vs. Screwtop: Tim James CWM
Cork taint is a hotly debated topic worldwide. Is wine's long romance with cork over? Cape Wine Master Tim James examines the burgeoning flirtation with screwcaps.
Occasionally, if I deign to take my BYO bottle to a fancy restaurant, the corkscrew-wielder will solemnly proffer the liberated cork. Not quite sure of what is expected of me, I nod encouragingly, waiting for a splash of wine in my glass so that I can give it a sniff - hopefully an approving one. Are the days of this pleasant little ritual numbered? Will a sommelier ever imagine I'll want to cast my connoisseur's eyes on a metal screwcap? Further, the aluminium-sealed wine itself will be in the condition in which the winemaker left it, which will obviate the need for that judicious sniff and confirmatory sip. Nothing to do but drink and enjoy.
Corks are not about to be completely abandoned - not this month, anyway - but the world will be seeing an increasing number of screwcaps, even on serious wines, especially whites. If most producers had their way, we would abandon our corkscrews, exchanging the ceremony of extraction for an oh-so-welcome confidence in the wine not being spoiled by contaminants harboured in the cork. Lowest estimates of the proportion of bottles damaged by cork-related taints are around three percent. Tests and experience are convincing more and more people that screwtops are the closures most likely to preserve wine in the state we'd like to find it in. That other alternative to cork, the synthetic stopper, seems to be slipping in favour, with some producers finding problems with it.
Why then do so many bottles still have a piece of bark stuffed down their mouths, rather than bearing a nicely high-tech piece of easily removable wraparound metal? Largely, I fear, because wine snobs like us are ridiculously romantic and traditionalist about it, and associate screwcaps with liquids more lowly than we wish to use for chasing rack of lamb or aubergine ravioli down our throats. Also, of course, because the cork producers do have arguments on their side - the most persuasive of which is probably that forests are wonderful things and that zillions of biodegradable corks are nicer to have bobbing around the environment than the same number of discarded metal tops.
Furthermore, evidence is inevitably not (yet?) entirely conclusive that problems will not emerge for screwtopped wines kept for a dozen or two years to mature. There is no doubt, however, that such wines will mature - the old myth that wines need to 'breathe' through their corks is simply that, a myth. Only time will reveal all, although there are already older bottles around to convey some truths. The great Bordeaux estate Haut-Brion started experiments with screwcaps in the 1970s, for example; after 10 years their only problem was that the lining of the cap had become brittle and allowed air to pass - something technology has now surely resolved.
The number of important wines bearing screwcaps increases daily. In all the excited coverage of the closure debate in recent years, it is scarcely mentioned that the Swiss have long been using screwcaps, very satisfactorily, for the larger half of their small but expensive wine production. The Swiss and their wines are about as sexy as a cuckoo clock, however. The metal closure's great PR breakthrough occurred a year back, when Riesling producers in Australia's Clare Valley agreed that they would abandon both real and plastic corks and move to 'Stelvin' - the name of Australia's commonest brand of screwtop.
More recently, a group of leading New Zealand wineries formed a Screwcap Wine Seal Initiative to promote their conviction that lined aluminium is the best way of protecting wine. Some of these producers are sealing all of their wines, including Pinot Noir, in this way. In California, there have also been moves in this direction - most recently the prominent winemaker and self-publicist Randall Grahm declared that his lower range of wines, both white and red, will have screwcaps, and that his top wines will follow suit if his customers seem likely to find them acceptable.
Acceptable - ah, there's the rub! Given that it is getting harder to find anyone outside the cork industry who is not pretty convinced by the technical claims of the screwcap, the most important reason for the shift to aluminium not being a stampede is doubt that 'the market' will accept it. (Strange, really, that people who allow oak chips, powdered tannin and other additives to sully their wines should resist something that undoubtedly improves quality.) 'Consumer resistance' is what is making Cape producer Villiera hold back - although, dissatisfied with synthetic stoppers, they are returning to real cork. Warwick Estate had seriously considered releasing their Sauvignon Blanc with a screwcap this year - but were advised that customers might disapprove; general manager Mike Ratcliffe believes, anyway, that the best quality corks are reliable.
Most producers who are more doubtful about cork, here and abroad, are waiting for everyone else to 'educate the market' and absorb any early reluctance from buyers. Others show more determination to both protect their wines from spoilage and to trust that wine drinkers will realise the advantages. Expect to see some important local wines with screwcaps soon: Fairview Viognier, one of our finest aromatic white wines, among them. And 500 cases of Vergelegen's Sauvignon Blanc will have screwcaps - to be sold at a slightly higher price than bottles with a cork. Winemaker André van Rensburg, one senses, would desperately like to release all his wines in this way and is determined that some of his next Cabernet Sauvignon will also be bottled thus.
Even the most determined wine-producing distrusters of corks in South Africa have to confront the question of cost, however. There should soon be suitable bottles and caps produced locally in sufficient quantity but a bottling line itself is a huge investment: a small winery, or even a larger one with squeezed margins, would be hard-pressed to swop systems, or to have the option of running both. This would be a major retarding factor in any wholehearted move towards screwcaps.
Radical change in wine bottle closures is gathering momentum. But will it remain a New World phenomenon? There is no doubt that it is only if and when the most prestigious producers of France, Germany and Italy move to screwcaps that cork's battle to retain a major share of the closure market will be lost. Even then, the culture of cork will be hard to break. However efficient, screwcaps are as unlovely and unromantic as winery accountants.
Paradoxically, a substantial move from cork might save the cork industry, if reduced demand means raised standards of cork production and incidence of taint becoming as negligible as it seems, from all evidence, to have been 50 years ago. The cork industry is, anyway, determined to solve its technical problems.
So don't throw away your corkscrew just yet but do start practising that elegant wrist-turning movement too. And just think: keepers of wine with screwcaps will now be able to do it standing up - no need to lay the bottles down to keep the cork moist.
