While it’s easy to appreciate the theater of popping a cork out of a bottle of wine, if you’ve drunk more than 10 bottles in your life, chances are you’ve had one that was corked. Screwcaps are hailed in the New World as being the solution to tainted wine, but the Old World is holding firm against their use.
Screwcaps on wine have really taken off in the last decade. Previously associated with ‘cheap and cheerful’ wines, they are now gaining traction in the premium wine market.
They were first adapted for wine more than 40 years ago to eliminate the prevalence of cork taint (TCA), which industry pundits say affects anywhere between 5-15% of corks. TCA makes the wine from the bottle smell musty and renders it 'corked' and undrinkable – quite a problem if you paid a small fortune for it.
Screwcaps were initially designed in France and trialed at the University of Burgundy – which is ironic considering that France is one of the last pockets of resistance to screwcap technology. Australia and New Zealand led the way during the 1980s and now around 85% of New Zealand wine is under screwcap.
Screwcaps: for and against
Old stigmas die hard, and the perception that screwcaps are for cheap, drink-young wines has proved hard to dispel. Many wine experts also believed that wine would not age under screwcap, because it was unable to breathe.
A traditional hallmark of a wine that has been aged under cork for more than a decade or so is usually a noticeably lower level in the bottle. The wine appears to evaporate and cork advocates say that this is because of the very gradual exchange of air through the imperfect cork closure. This appears to be the major sticking point in screwcaps gaining market dominance in the super-premium market of First Growth Bordeaux. Cork advocates say while it might be fine to bottle a ‘drink now’ wine under screwcap, if the bottle’s value depends on it being able to be aged for 25 years, like a First Growth Bordeaux does, then they’d prefer to take their chances with 1 in 10 being undrinkable.
But crucially for screwcaps, there is now research to suggest that it is not oxygen ingress that results in wine developing desirable bottle age, but rather as the late oenologist Emile Peynaud puts it, “a process of reduction or asphyxia, by which wine develops in the bottle.” So really, the wine develops in spite of, not because of oxygen.
Wine under screwcap also has two other major storage benefits: a sturdier resistance to changes in temperature and humidity, making it better for less-than-perfect cellar conditions; and the fact it can be stored vertically because its closure doesn’t rely on contact with the wine to remain tight, as a cork does.
For now, cork advocates are still holding strong in the super-premium markets, buoyed by hundreds of years of tradition. But the oldest wine under screwcap is approximately 38 years old and is still drinking well today. It may be only a matter of time before the evidence becomes overwhelming and wine collectors are no longer prepared to accept a 10% failure rate in their investments.
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