Cork is king?

So what is the best method of sealing the wine in a bottle to ensure it stays fresh and develops properly while minimising the risk of TCA and cork taint? There is nothing worse than having a special bottle of wine you have been looking forward to and it not being right, anything from just a bit off to properly rank!

Let us have a look at the options:

Traditional cork

If something is not broken why fix it? Wine bottles have been secured with corks for years and they (generally) work. If stored correctly the wine keeps the cork damp and so it does not shrink and keeps the air out. The key here is the big word “if” stored correctly, get this wrong and you are on a hiding to nothing with keeping the wine. As the corks are cut from the bark and are very natural there are inherent risks of natural flaws in the wood which can cause a failure too.

There is also a concern raised over the growth in demand for cork and the supply of the raw material: these trees grow primarily in south west Europe and North West Africa whereas wine is made on every continent apart from Antarctica. However these trees regenerate the cork over a ten year period and live for 200 years so they are very sustainable and this is the most ecologically sound method of sealing a bottle. There is a balance to strike here between being able to supply the cork needed at the right price and giving the oak forests an agricultural purpose. Should demand collapse for natural corks then the forest owners would switch to a different crop and we would see massive habitat destruction with major impacts on the regional biodiversity.


Composite cork

These corks are made from cork particles stuck together with approved glues under pressure to give a closure that looks and feels like a traditional cork but at a fraction of the price. However these generally should only be used for wines that are designed to be drunk young as they do not have the life expectancy of a natural cork.


Plastic cork

These are an alternative to natural cork in that they do give a reasonable seal to the bottle and as they do not need to be kept moist by the wine the bottles can be stored upright. The big “however” is that these plastic corks do not have the plasticity of natural cork so will not swell in the bottle neck giving a tight seal. To achieve this level of seal the cork would have to be in so tightly we as consumers with a regular corkscrew would never be able to remove it! These corks are best used in wines that are going to be drunk within a year or two.


Screw caps

This is where the really big discussions come in, especially among some of the older members of the wine drinking community who remember the truly dreadful wines of our youth that were made with this type of closure. What we have to remember here is that the wine is the guilty party here, not the closure!

Screw caps do give a much better seal and the incidence of taint is very, very much reduced. The bottles are much easier to open so in some respects they are a win win. In some circles this does count against these tops – the whole routine of opening a bottle with a cork is part of the tradition, especially in restaurants.

Fresh whites and easy drinking reds are ideally closed with a screw cap, where the debate is still on-going is how well wines will age this way. Is part of the process of aging influenced by the cork being slightly porous? Will great wines, both whites and reds, be able to mature and develop as they have previously? It will take a brave and long-sighted winemaker to bottle some wines with cork and others with screw caps to compare how they develop and what differences there are.

For every day wines screw caps are far cheaper and the technology has improved so much that they are a great way to keep wine accessible and encourage more people to drink it. We do need to address the environmental issue – how easily are they recycled and what long term damage could they do as the plastic and metal cannot be separated. In melting down the metal the plastic will be burnt off which does raise some pollution issue.

Crown caps

Most people would run a mile from a bottle with a crown cap more usually seen on beer bottles but it is worth taking a moment to consider the merits and the history. Champagne and other sparkling wines are often sealed with a crown cap for the first fermentation and only replaced with cork for final maturation. There are some sparkling wine makers who are now starting to use this for the finished product too – the cap will seal in the bubbles and keep the wine fresh. Again we have the debate as to how well this will allow the wine to age.

Conclusion

The long and short of this is that there are no right or wrong answers! Some wines will be better suited to some closures than others so buy your wines boldly looking more at the producer and region than what the wine is sealed with. Happy shopping and researching!