Snow Day Debate

With so many people having the day off today (not us-the stores opened at 11am), it seemed like a good time to re-visit one of the classic debates in the wine industry: cork vs. screw cap. A recent NPR article (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/02/259128689/cork-versus-screw-cap-dont-judge-a-wine-by-how-its-sealed?utm_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=nprfacebook&utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook) got us talking again.

To back up for a moment, the wine industry has been searching for a better closure since pretty much the first bottle was sealed. If you go through our stores today, you'll see wine sealed in traditional cork, faux cork (synthetic or composite), Stelvin (the proper term for screw-top), Zork tops, even beer cap style closures. When you're in the store next, take a few minutes and survey the scene for yourself. We think you'll be surprised at the number of wines that use something other than cork.

More than 95% of wines are opened within a few days of purchase. That really makes the question about closure type more or less of a personal preference issue. A bottle of wine that qualifies in the "everyday" category, red or white, is meant to be enjoyed soon after purchase, confirming that closure methods really are about personal preference.

Harvesting cork

One common question we get is about the environmental impact of cork. Since it's harvested from trees, the thinking goes, won't that eventually be an endangered resource? According to the Cork Institute of America, the trees live up to 150 years, regenerating its outer layer (the layer that is harvested for wine corks) about a dozen times. Like Christmas trees, cork trees (an evergreen oak called Quercus Suber) are a renewable resource, and generally protected by law. There are about 5.4 million acres of cork tree forests today.

Natural cork, Opus One Winery

Certainly, if you love tradition and flair, then cork remains a great choice. When I visited Opus One last year, they explained that they selected cork because of its ability to allow minute amounts of air to enter the bottle over time. The air softens the tannins, which usually makes a wine more enjoyable. We tasted the 2006 and 2009 vintages side-by-side, and even though they were both young (by Opus One standards), the 2006 was much more approachable. There was an obvious difference in how the wines showed.

The biggest downside of cork has to be taint (TCA). While cork quality has been improving consistently, estimates are that between 2% to 7% of wine will be "corked" (making it a $280 million problem). That wet newspaper smell you may have encountered is not what the winemaker intended. And the industry improvements don't mean much when you're at a BYO with a tainted bottle.

Being unbound by tradition, winemakers in Australia and New Zealand have really led the industry in Stelvin research. That's why you'll find nearly all of the wines in our store from those countries, even Fine Wine, sealed in Stelvin. In fact, a 10 year study conducted by the Australian Wine Research Institute which focused on the long lasting effects of natural corks verses artificial corks verses Stelvin caps yielded interesting results. Using identical bottles of Semillon, the long term analysis concluded that both the natural and artificial corks exhibited some varying degrees of oxidation, while the screw cap wines showed little oxidation.

Take Penfold's Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon, for example. It's clearly a Fine Wine, and can easily be cellared for two decades. Bin 707 has a Bottle Club® price of $284.99, and it's sealed with Stelvin.

As we noted earlier, most wines are opened within days of purchase, making Stelvin an excellent choice. White wines especially are enjoyed young, and since Stelvin does not permit air to enter the bottle, that youthful crisp nature of the wine is preserved. And it doesn't hurt that Stelvin costs less than cork.

You'll find the Zork Top on a growing number of wines. You get some of the flair associated with cork, with a seal so tight that, after re-closing a bottle, you can turn it upside down and not spill a drop.

The bottom part of the Zork closure peels away and gets thrown out. The remaining part of the closure will resemble a whiskey bottle, in that it's got shoulders that prevent it from sliding into the bottle. And it does "pop" when opened (and re-opened!), because the seal is that tight.

There aren't many wines sealed with a crown cap, or beer-bottle style closure. The Berger Gruner Veltliner is one, and you should be able to clearly see the closure in this image:

Wines like this illustrate why there are after-market closures available. While cork and some other closures can make re-sealing a bottle difficult, the crown cap is really not designed for re-sealing. It does, however, offer the same air-tight original seal that you'll get with Stelvin or the Zork.

Really, we think the deciding issue is what's inside the bottle, not how it's closed. Today, you can find wine at virtually every price point in essentially every kind of closure on the market. Wines in cork and Stelvin can be found across any list of top wines, scoring 90 points or higher because of the wine itself, not the closure. And when summer picnic season finally arrives, you've got plenty of quality choices that allow you to leave the corkscrew at home.