by J. Michael Wheeler
If a bottle of wine sealed with a cork spoils, you say the wine’s corked. If a bottle of wine sealed with a screw cap spoils, would you say the wine’s screwed?
Natural cork, the bark from the Portuguese cork tree has been keeping the air from bottled wine for over 300 years. But cork’s been in trouble for the past couple of decades. Cork taint, the musty “this wine’s gone bad” taste, is caused by the chemical compound TCA (trichloroanisole). TCA is introduced to a cork by a natural mold. It can occur at the harvesting, manufacturing, or storage stages. Imperfect corks can also allow too much oxygen into the bottle, termed random oxidation, and cause the wine to spoil.
Winemakers have recently been exploring alternative closures; the most popular of those have been plastic stoppers (12% of current world market) and the screw cap (7% of current world market). But many new closures are becoming available.
Recent developments in the bottleneck wars include:
Vino-Lok a glass stopper that looks like the top of a decanter. In the States it is marketed under the name Vino-Seal. vino-lok.com
Zork an injection molded food-grade polymer that consists of a tamper-resistant outer cap, a metal foil lining that blocks oxygen from entering the bottle, and a plunger that enters the bottle. zork.com
Pro-Cork a natural cork is sheathed in multiple layers of fine polymer membranes, blocking TCA from entering the wine. procork.com
Natural Cork Amorim, the world’s largest cork manufacturer, has introduced strict controls to reduce TCA including a new technology for “steam cleaning” natural corks. amorim.com
Twin Top marketed by Amorim, is reconstituted cork particles sandwiched between treated disks of natural cork. amorim.com
Diam Oenéo, a French-based cork company, uses a technique similar to that used to decaffeinate coffee, which the company claims reduces TCA “below measurable levels.” Oenéo is also developing a closure for sparkling wines called Mytik. oeneo.com
Crown Seals long used in Champagne cellars to seal their wines during second fermentation. Crown seals (they are like beer bottle caps) are being used by some sparkling wine producers for retail releases.
And what about aging the wines in different enclosures? In his article Too Closed to Call (Food Arts 7.08), Martin Gillam, tells us the jury is still out. Winemakers have been reporting varying results with alternative closures. Gillam reports that
Paul Draper [of Ridge Vineyards] has been testing alternative closures sine the early 1990’s and has rejected all of them so far. “We’ve found that plastic corks and the Vino-Seal allow in too much air and cause the wines to age too rapidly,” he says. “Conversely, under standard airtight screw caps, the wines hardly age at all, whereas with cork the wines develop the complexity with time that we’re looking for. We’re not sure how, but it seems some air penetrates the cork or is released from within the cork, making the wine more complex. We haven’t found a closure that will do that better than cork.”
Gillam’s article explores in greater depth the alternative closures coming to market now. Our abbreviated summary comes from that article.
Related Articles
The Cork's Comeback
Rethinking the Wine Bottle
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