Cork is about ritual

Put a cork in it

I don't know about you, but I can't get used to screw-caps in wine bottles. At the winery, we still use mostly corks. People who visit us ask why we haven't changed to some other closure.  I really can't come up with a definitive answer. As a winemaker I should be more innovative. They say screw-tops keep the wine fresher. Maybe I am just old-fashioned, but to me there's no sound in the world so evocative of good times and pleasure than the "pop" of a cork leaving a bottle of wine.

Wineries started experimenting with alternative closures about twenty years ago. They found that too many wines were tasting "corked," a mildewy taste somewhere between wet dog and moldering newspaper that happens when the wine comes in contact with a cork infected with a horrible little compound called 2, 4, 6 trichloroanisole, or TCA. The presence of TCA is so offensive to human taste buds that we can detect in when its presence at levels of just a few parts per billion, the equivalent of one teaspoon in several THOUSAND Olympic-sized swimming pools. You can see why winemakers want to avoid it.

Estimates of the number of "corked" bottles range from 10 per cent down. Imagine using a product in a manufacturing process that caused one in ten of your finished goods to go bad! The cork companies read the press too and they have tightened up quality control. As a result the occurrence of cork taint is down in independent tests to somewhere around one per cent.

Still, if cork causes one in a hundred bottles to go bad, why not switch? Because there is as yet nothing that enhances the aging of wine like a cork. You see, wine is a living thing--in the tank, in the barrel, and in the bottle. With the slow exposure to air, wine's flavours broaden and ripen. As such wine flavours grow in the presence of other living things--the wood of barrels, the oak of corks. Cork breathes, and allows the very controlled exchange of air which allows wine to mature in the bottle.

They've tried to emulate this air exchange in other closures. Screw-caps, for instance, have the plastic liner inside the cap, the part that achieves the seal with the top of the bottle, engineered to allow air to pass through it, allowing the wine to age. This somewhat makes up for the deficiencies of this closure, but still no pop.

Lots of wines were not meant to age. In fact the estimate of the length of time the average wine-drinker holds onto a bottle before opening it is about a half-hour. Fresh young whites are best enjoyed today. And many low-acid, high-alcohol New World red wines are built for enjoying now, not for aging. Many of these wines should be bottled under screw-cap or some other alternative closure.

Other myths abound about the inappropriateness of cork. Some say cork trees are endangered. That's hogwash. Portugal, among other countries, is covered in plantations of cork oak trees which give off millions of corks every year and live for decades. Others say cork does not keep the wine as fresh as other closures. But if freshness in wine were so important, why are ALL the most expensive Bordeaux and Burgundy wines--and these are the most collectible wines in the world--bottled under cork?

Other closures have their advantages--mostly cost. A real cork costs between 30 and 75 cents, while composite corks, made up of a bunch of little cork pieces glued together, can be half that much. When you're talking about artificial corks or screw caps, the cost is down to pennies apiece. Pretty compelling reason for using them. Yet the argument that they improve the wine is hard to make.

So despite the trend towards alternative closures, I look forward to many years of rich red wines resting in my basement, and our feast table alive with the "pop!" of a natural cork pulled from the bottle. There's no sound quite like it.

Cheers!

Keith Watt

Keith is owner and winemaker at Morning Bay Vineyard and Estate Winery on Pender Island, BC.