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.

That would be Wild Turkey. ^

Many brands of liquor have this.

My romantic side does very much prefer the allure of drawing a cork from a nice bottle of wine. That is, until that very special bottle one has been saving for the right occasion is CORKED! :mad: My scientific side says the technology is here and there is not much to be said for stinky crumbly corks on a good bottle or wine any longer.
Clearly I’m torn; but my scientific side tends to win such arguments. Ultimately corks will be a relic, much like a newspaper . . .

The sooner all wine is under screwcap the better. Easier to open and no chance of cork taint.

Very common with small batch bourbons.

If I can suppress my inner snob, I'll admit to prefering a screwtop. I like the way they travel and lay down after being opened. I've never broken one halfway off. I've opened a few bottles of "corked" wine, but never one that was "screwed". I still travel with a corkscrew, especially to places where screwtops are less common, but that's just the boyscout in me.

Is UC Davis a sufficiently impartial source for you? Their Enology program is considered to be one of the best in the world (and has done much to advance the science of making wine, albeit sometimes leading to loss of terroir and soul-less chardonnays in California). Sometimes science can be a force for evil as well as for good ... still they've evaluated many aspects of screwcaps and found it to be superior by every criterion, for better wines. Their research finds that badly made wines benefit from being under cork instead of a screwcap, as some of the faults in the wine, such as excess SO2, will burn off over time under cork and not in a screwcap. So, bad wine makers prefer cork, while good wine makers use screwcap. I've recently paid over USD 500 for a single bottle of wine, with screwcap; so it really exists in the high end, with some of the finest wines in the world. But I do agree that snobbery in the wine world colours it considerably. See http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/pdf/at...nd%20CS%20.pdf

Golly!

UC Davis, once they finally got it straight, is one of the best wine science places in the world. (they initially preached that the raw material was not all that important, everything could be fixed in the chemistry room)

"As the authors point out, they cannot conclude from this study whether oxygen is or is not required for
red wine development because the trial did not include an anaerobic treatment (a zero-headspace or a
vacuumed headspace). I would add that they cannot compare the effect of closures directly, because the
headspaces in their experimental design were not the same."

"This
panel was also asked to perform descriptive analysis of the wines (at 11, 18, and 24 months post-bottling)."

looks like decent study, however, the oldest wine in this test is 2 years old!! let's wait 10 years, and see how the Bordeaux age.

i cannot recall the last time i bought a less than 2 year old wine(most clearances are on 4+yo wines). i do loose a few to bad corks and maderization, but live with it.

I agree and I believe you're going to see that day come sooner than many may realize.

False.

It annoys me that the word "cork" is used to describe TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) contamination of a wine. Cork is the most common vector for TCA to make its way into a wine, but many other implements used in the winemaking process--notably, wooden barrels--can be just as guilty.

And also, as I mentioned above, there is "screw top reduction". So both methods can have their faults.

However after what must be several thousands of bottles sampled, I don't think either has ever happened to me. So why worry?

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slawecki--

I think you should contact Laura Catena about those Chards you have.... ^

Correct. Entire wineries have been known to be "corked."

I have a bottle of Grand Marnier 150 where that's the case, but unfortunately the years were not kind to the cork and it dried out and disintegrated. (The liqueur, though... mmmmmmmmmmmmm! and I don't normally like GM)

Strangely enough (to me, anyway), Americans seem to be bigger snobs than the French when it comes to corks versus synthetic corks, screwcaps, and especially box wines.

the cleanup of burgundy and Tuscan wine cellars greatly reduced the mass TCA problem. BV had 2 or 3 vintages ruined from tca. i do not know how they finally resolved the problem. i know they new they had the problem, but they could not get the cellar clean.

Thanks for posting this so I didnt have to... ^

I know of various high-end labels that have shed cork... but not at the price point you mention. Is this a current vintage release or is this an at auction purchase of a back vintage...?

I dont mean to put you on the spot, but would you mind sharing the details of your purchase...? If PM is better for you and you dont mind sharing the info, I would appreciate hearing the details.

Muchas gracias,
Gaucho100K

Why not both? Remove the screwtop, uncork, and if unfinished, replace with the screwtop?

PP

US is very snobbish about wine, making marketing of screwcaps difficult; there are several Cabs > USD 100 bottled in California with screwcaps, however. The expensive wines with screwcaps are all from Australia and NZ from what I've seen, in fact everything except Grange is available in screwcap. My expensive bottle was Penfolds Bin 707 1990 (the first year that screwcap was done). Current release cost is about USD 150 and worth it. For current release wines the most expensive screwcap that I've seen is USD 200 and that is in the US (also sold out at the winery, there is no retail distribution). You guys in the wine business should be well versed about this, maybe I should be charging for consultation? In any case I have yet to encounter a screwcap wine that has suffered for it (and that includes no TCA, though of course it can happen).

It annoys me when math terms (vector is from math, if I'm correct?) are used to describe wine contamination. What do you mean by that?

vector is not only a math term. There are several definitions within biology and epidemiology, but simply put it's a method/source of passing a contaminant/pathogen from one body to another.

So cork is a vector, meaning it's some kind of bug? (keeping it on topic here, right? :))

Not true as I noted above in post #13. Mesach goes for around $500 depending on the year.

No... A vector, in that sense is a mode of pathogen transfer. FWIW, humans and other animals can all act as vectors :)

As I mentioned earlier, I carry a portable corkscrew in my carry on bag, the kind where the corkscrew is in a tube and the tube removes and then goes through a hole in the top of the corkscrew to become the handle. The one downside is the occasional hard to remove cork, one of which rests in my hotel room right now. Couldn't get it out last night, no matter how hard I pulled. Tonight I'll take it downstairs to the hotel bar and see if they will open it for me...probably charge me a corkage fee... :o