#screwcaps

Can the Wine Cork Help Save the World?

There is a recent movement away from using traditional cork closures due to some inaccurate and bad press. In investigating the cork for this blog and for the Spaz on Wine, Uncorked Podcast,  I was delighted to find that there are many reasons, all good, to buy wines with natural cork stoppers. The history, romance, and earth saving qualities of the natural cork is captivating. Read on, my friend!

Having hosted thousands of wine tastings for small groups in the seven years we've been open, it's been interesting how the same questions come up over and over again. We thought it would be fun to pick a few of the most popular and dig a bit deeper! If you'd like to find out more about our private wine tastings, click here. A wine tasting gift voucher, by the way, would make an awesome Christmas gift for that wine lover in your life... just saying.

This article is adapted from a post on Simon's blog, where you can also find Frequently-Asked Question #1!

“Are corks really better than screwcaps?"

We’re asked this question, or a variation of it, an awful lot in our wine tastings - most people appreciate the ceremony of popping a cork but also the convenience and cheaper cost of screwcaps. And what about all those bottles we hear about being 'corked'?!? Looking further into the subject what became obvious is that there’s an awful lot of opinion out there but not many people, including wine experts, seem to really have a grip on the answers. So when I was offered the chance to visit a cork factory in Portugal, I thought it would be a great opportunity to really get to the bottom of the subject!

‘You’re aware that wine corks don’t grow on trees, I guess?’ Joana, my host at the Amorim cork factory had called before my visit to gauge how much I already knew about the subject. It seems that previous visitors, at the mention of cork trees, have assumed you can pick the corks, like fruit. Having visited the Alentejo a number of times and marvelled at the cork trees that are abundant here like nowhere else on earth, I had at least a grasp of the basics, but still it was amazing to find out how much, after many years working with wine, I didn’t know about cork.

Almost half of the world’s cork is grown in Portugal, and the majority of that in the Alentejo, the vast plains which take up almost a third of the country. Cork is not planted widely elsewhere, not because it would not be suited to the climate of, say, California or parts of Australia, but because, as an agricultural product, it requires an attitude at odds with the modern world: patience. Cork trees take 43 years from planting until they are ready to harvest for wine stoppers, and even then, the bark can be stripped only once every nine years. As a financial investment, you could do better for a quick return. The beauty of cork though – because only the bark is harvested – is that it is a naturally renewable material which can keep producing for 250 years or more. In fact, a point rarely mentioned in the on-going cork vs. screwcap debate is the environmental advantage of the former: cork is an organic, renewable and sustainable product that supports many communities.

If not picked like fruit, then, how are wine corks produced? The harvest begins in late spring, and two to three weeks of consistent hot weather is needed for the sap to form a layer that effectively separates the bark from the tree. Sharp axes are used to peel off and remove large rectangular chunks of bark, leaving the core of the tree exposed; its colour a kind of ‘startled orange’, as Barry Hatton (in his excellent book, 'The Portuguese') put it so well, which gradually fades over the next couple of years.

After a drying period, the processing of cork bark begins with boiling for an hour, to clean, flatten, and give the cork elasticity. Cork’s unique qualities are due to a structure made up of 40 million hexagonal cells per cubic centimetre, which absorb like a sponge, giving the spring that makes it a perfect material for stoppering wine, as well as the insulation qualities that enabled the cork oak to survive an ice age. If you’ve ever tried to cut cork, perhaps for a school art project, you may know how much easier this becomes after soaking in boiling water. Exactly the same happens in the cork factory on a large scale, when, after the boiling process, the best of the cork pieces are taken whole and wine corks cut straight out of it. The perfect natural cork is of one piece, with as few irregularities in the surface as possible.

Cork was first used to close wine bottles 250 years ago, for the first time allowing wine to both mature and travel long distances intact. In the face of competition from alternative closures, though, much of the focus on cork today is how suitable the material remains. Cork had a virtual monopoly on wine closures until a sharp decline in the 1990s, as the availability of alternative closures highlighted cork’s two main negative factors: firstly cost – not all wine can afford to be stoppered with natural cork, and as more people took to enjoying wine as an everyday drink there was an increased demand for everyday prices; secondly, and infamously, was the risk of TCA, or a bottle of wine becoming ‘corked’.

A corked wine has nothing to do with pieces of cork floating in the wine, as many consumers believe. It is a wine which has been contaminated with trichloroanisole (TCA), a bacteria which can be present in the cork tree itself and which reacts with the wine and causes it to go bad – the smell is of must and damp, and is distinctive once you become familiar with it. Prior to the popularity of alternative closures, there was little incentive for the cork industry to work at reducing levels of TCA, and many believe the level of corked bottles on the market reached one in ten, or even higher. In this way, the rise of alternative closures was a godsend for the wine industry as a whole, forcing cork producers to up their game and take measures towards quality. For example, in the past vast amounts of cork would be boiled together, meaning isolated instances of TCA could and did infect whole batches of cork. Now, small tanks are used and bad batches can be traced, meaning everyone has an incentive to produce a quality product.

Research into cork quality still has a long way to go, but it is gaining pace. We visit the labs where batches of corks are tested: from a simple smell test to chromatography to mass spectrometry. And the investment is not just in cork quality, but also in sustainable production. Already a sustainable product, the cork factory we visited uses cork dust, a by-product of the production process, to power 62% of their energy needs (including 95% of the energy needed for boiling the cork).

The question most asked when it comes to cork, though, is whether it is the best choice for the wine itself. For years I’ve been telling customers that it makes little difference, unless you’re planning to age the bottle. I’ve described how cork allows just enough oxygen in for the wine to ‘breathe’ and mature at the correct pace, whilst artificial closures can develop undesirable ‘reductive’ aromas due to lack of oxygen after more than a few years. I’m wrong, it seems, though not alone, as this was indeed the general view on the subject for a long time. In reality, it seems, no-one really knew, and despite more research, it’s still a confused area. An article on the Enology International site suggests that ‘the cork is not supposed to breathe. Ideally, it is not supposed to allow any oxygen to get into the wine.’ Joana tells me the same thing, adding that the current thinking is that the only oxygen that effects the wine is oxygen already held within the cork, and in fact the same article has a nice description of this: ‘the cork is a time capsule of the air that was present during the eight years the bark took to grow back to the proper diameter to be harvested’. This seems to make a certain amount of sense, a cork naturally allowing enough oxygen for steady maturation of the wine, but forming a barrier to ‘new oxygen’ getting in.

What about artificial closures? An article from Wine Folly tells us that synthetic corks ‘let in a bit more oxygen’ than natural cork, whilst screwcaps ‘admit either a bit more or a bit less oxygen than good natural corks’. So, presumably, a well-made screwcap could age a wine as well as natural cork? The problem is: we simply don’t know. And this is the only thing that everyone seems to agree on. Not enough producers have been willing to put age-worthy wine under screwcap for the results to be conclusive. This is partly because these wines can fetch a high enough price to merit money spent on good quality natural cork, but more important is consumer perception.

Whilst screwcaps are far more accepted these days, even for wines at relatively high price points, when it comes to those ‘special’ bottles, a screwcap still seems to rather spoil the effect. Perhaps because, particularly when you’re looking for something special, you’re not just spending money on the quality of the liquid itself. Wine is unique in the way it soaks in what surrounds it and serves this up as a whole experience; everything from traditions and stories around the production, to the company in which it is consumed, to the pulling of the cork itself: still an indispensable part of that ‘fine wine experience’ we are investing in when we enjoy a special bottle. This may be a particularly Anglo-centric way of looking at things, but from what I’ve read of newer markets – Asia or Brazil, for example; it’s telling that this ‘fine wine experience’ itself often seems to be what is actually being bought and sold.

With this in mind, and with research into reducing TCA – not to mention innovations with lower-priced stoppers – moving ahead at pace, I can’t see a situation where the cork industry is under real threat. In fact, the expansion of wine-producing countries has meant that both cork and artificial closures have increased their markets in recent years, a fact which is greatly encouraging for those of us for who still find something magical in the pop of a cork.

Brisbane wine writer Tyson Stelzer has used his International Wine & Spirit Competition Communicator of the Year 2015 award to give him a platform to turn on a few light-bulbs in Italy regarding screwcaps. 

Stelzer, a long-time screwcap advocate and author of two books on the topic, was presented with his award at the opening ceremony of the annual Italian wine exposition Vinitaly in Verona recently. He used the opportunity to present a blind tasting of five mature flagship Australian wines sealed under both screwcap and cork. 

Italy, of course, is one of the last bastions of blind loyalty to cork. Italy has gone so far as to legislate against the use of alternative closures on its DOCG wines. But the expert panel voted the screwcapped wines ahead of the cork-sealed wines in the blind tasting. 

The wines included Henschke Hill of Grace 2004 (tasting), Cullen Diana Madeline Cabernet Merlot 2004 and ‘05 (tastings), Yalumba The Signature Cabernet Shiraz 2003 (tastings), and Brokenwood Rayner Shiraz 2001. 

“The result was ground-breaking for Italy, where screwcaps remain controversial and until recently have been prohibited on the country’s top wines,” Stelzer said. He said the tasting was significant for Australia, whose global reputation as a fine wine producer relied on overcoming the misconception that screwcaps are inferior.

Venice sommelier Annie Martin-Stefannato admitted “we will have to change our mindset”. Panama wine expert Fabrizio Cezzi was impressed with the aging of the wines under screwcap. “I did not expect that they would age so well – even better than under cork; it really surprised me.” Argentina sommelier Ariel Morales agreed, saying the tasting demonstrated that red wines can mature reliably under screwcap.

People always scold, "Don't judge a book by its cover." But what about when it comes to wine?

In recent years, we have been instructed to judge wines by the content of their character, not the type of packaging. But when it comes down to the whole screw caps versus cork issue - I'm guilty - that Pop! is just part of wine’s charm. Finally, somebody is going to tell me if I'm on to something or just a hopeless romantic...

Katherine Ramos, Features Editor, Lot18

In February, Decanter ran an article claiming that Bordeaux first growth Château Margaux plans to start using screw caps on its second label, Pavillon. Though Margaux publicly announced years ago that it was experimenting with this closure, if they are indeed going forward with it, the move will lend some serious legitimacy to a bottle closure too often associated with low quality. 

One of my Lot18 co-workers with a background in wine retail recently mentioned that his customers would often outright dismiss screw-cap bottles as garbage, often missing out on some incredible wines. Don’t make this same mistake. If you do just a little research – no more than with any cork-closed wine – you can get fantastic bottles from very serious producers.

While Château Margaux’s experimenting with less traditional closures would be a major step, the fact is that even without the first growth's signoff (which would, of course, be delivered with a very large quill pen), the progress of screw caps is pretty much inevitable. Screw caps are gradually finding a place on the tops of high-quality-wine bottles, and we should all be happier for it. 

Why? For one thing, there’s far less risk of a wine being ruined by certain faults, such as cork taint; cork introduces the possibility of TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) contamination, which produces a smell and taste reminiscent of wet newspaper and mold. On the other hand, some experts believe that cork benefits certain wines, especially reds, with long-term aging potential, as it allows the wine to oxygenate ever so slightly and ever so slowly. But because many wines are intended to be drunk relatively young anyway, usefulness of cork in this respect is limited and merely introduces another way a wine might be damaged. And unlike the small nightmares that are synthetic corks – an unnecessary, annoying variation on the traditional ones – screw caps actually make the business of opening a bottle easier.

Admittedly, what screw caps are missing is the romance and ritual of popping a (real) cork – it does feel more like opening a soda bottle. But that said, not having to fumble with a corkscrew, or worse yet, realizing that yours is lost somewhere in the bowels of your kitchen junk drawer, can be worth this minor sacrifice.