Cork Vs Screw
 

What do you think of screw tops on wine bottles? I personally think they look bad but the ease of opening is good. What do you think?

Delta747

Friends in the restaurant biz and friends who read that huge "Wine Spectator" magazine say the screw-top is actually better for the wine--a fully air-tight seal without the possibilty of the cork going bad which affects the taste of the wine (there's a technical term for this -- cork skunking?)

It does take some of the ceremony away from wine opening, but since you can't put a corkscrew in your carry-on, we make do.......

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For serious wine cork is the only alternative.

Unless drinking really serious wine (such as Penfold >100 USD a bottle offerings), in which case screwcap is the only choice :) :) :)

Cork is a failed technology, with no benefit for aging wine and lots of potential for wrecking it. Took a century of research to understand how and why wine improves with age; now a screwcap closure is the superior alternative for those that care about wine quality. imho (well, not really so humble, I love wine too much).

could you provide a link to that knowledge. a quick google search does not bring up that century of research.

Cork for authenticity. I usually associate screwtops with hard liquor.

I hear screwtops are better for the wine, but it's just fun to pull a cork out. That popping sound is one of my favorites (along with a golf ball going into the hole).

Here's another wrinkle: synthetic cork or natural? I'm always a little disappointed (for no articulable reason) when I cut off the foil to find a synthetic cork.

I've had a small corkscrew in my carryon for the past 6 years. Never been asked about it. ^

I prefer the screwcap and when traveling will often choose a wine precisely because it has a screwcap. For example:

1. Hotel hopping by car. I can drink half a bottle in one hotel, replace the cap, and finish the bottle in another hotel.

2. Flying with carry-on luggage only. I don't enjoy having to replace my double-hinge corkscrews at $8-10 a pop when I forget to remove it from my carry-on bag and TSA decide to keep it for themselves.

3. White wines. A screwcap makes it easier to stick the open bottle back in the fridge to keep cool. Smaller refrigerators may not be able to accept a bottle vertically, so the screwcap allows you to lay it on its side without worry of leakage.

The quality control of screwcap wines is so much higher at the point of sale. The questionable ability to cellar screwcap wines is probably the only non-sentimental reason why natural cork should still have a place. Otherwise, I wish all wines were screwcap-enclosed.

Google finds dozens of links for me; you can start with http://www.screwcapinitiative.com/no...D=24&pageID=24

Wines age the same with screwcap as with cork -- and possibly better. There is over 40 years of research and experimentation to prove this claim. Among some of the oldest red wines under screwcaps is a 1966 Mercurey which, when tasted 38 years later, showed remarkable freshness and structure -- sadly I have not personally tasted such wines, but have tasted 15 year old screwcaps. Bottle aging is reductive and occurs in the absence of oxygen; though oxygen is useful for "burning off" some of the faults of wine. So cheap wine should be sealed with cork, and expensive wine should use screw caps :) :) :)

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amen!!!

Hmm. I live very close to Mercurey and I have never seen a screw top wine there or anywhere in Burgundy for that matter. However I am sure that the primary argument for staying traditional with cork is not scientific. It is just that it is what the customers want.

Like gfunkdave, when I open a bottle that has a synthetic cork, I just feel like this must be an inferior wine.

When it comes to "new world" wines however, I don't have a problem with the screw top. I've had some perfectly fine Aussie wines with screw tops. However the real top of the line Barossa wines (my favorite Aussie region) have always used cork. Grant Burge is the best of the bunch there.

And there is such a thing as screw top reduction. I saw something that said 2.2% of screw top wines suffer from this.

using the screwcap people as a reference for the great values of screwcaps does not work for a peer review article.

"""as an aside. my '97 catena chards have all been killed by cork dryout. the catena 2001 chards are fabulous. the corks are still great. this is not alta or anything like that. this is "the bottom of the barrel". the alta's i have start at 2003. they are also most fine.

the importer went belly up. a friend and i bought pretty much the whole inventory(about 30 cases of mixed catena)"""

if the '97's were in screw cap, i think they would be fine. if the 01's were in screw cap, i think they would be just as spectacular, as they are.

these wines should go to the Paris 2011 tasting, to prove that they are every bit as fine as california chards.

I forget what brand it was, but I've seen bourbon or whiskey with a cap that was actually a cork stopper.