Great Wines Under Cork And Screw Cap

The world's best bottles come in different varieties and flavors, of course--but also under different closures.
 
Admit it: The first time you saw a wine bottle with a screw top, you thought it was only slightly better than that found in a box. But if the wine had a cork, well, that was a trademark of quality, right?

Fair enough. But if you still feel that way about your wine purchases, you haven't been paying much attention to what you're drinking. The fact is, screw caps have topped bottles from some of the world's best wineries for about a decade, and even the most reputable wine critics openly acknowledge that there's nothing wrong with sealing a wine bottle with a screw cap in lieu of a cork. In fact, thousands of brands prefer the former.

Why the change? The first problem is that corks are formed inconsistently by Mother Nature (they're tree bark, after all), and therefore some allow in significant amounts of air that can spoil the wine. What's more, a chemical called 2, 4, 6 trichloroanisole can leak from the cork into the wine, ruining the aromas and flavors by making them smell like wet newspapers or cardboard.

But is a screw cap the perfect solution to both problems? We asked George Taber, author of To Cork Or Not To Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science and the Battle for the Wine Bottle to clarify.

In Depth: George Taber's Cork And Screw Cap Wine Picks
Video: Weekend Wines: Cork Vs. Screw Cap

Switching from corks to screw caps is a tough decision for a winery, in a business that had a value of $150 billion globally in 2007, according to IWSR, a London-based market research firm. Never mind that expensive bottling equipment might need to be purchased; how might loyal, longtime consumers react to having a bottle with a cork one day and a screw cap the next?

That's why some producers, like Napa winery Plumpjack, with its Oakville cabernet sauvignon, have treaded carefully. Starting in 1997, this winery switched only half its 3,000-plus case production to screw cap and keeps half under cork (depending on the growing season and crop yields, Plumpjack says it averages about 5,000 cases per year of this wine).