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 "Oui, madame, we have switched our wines to screwtop bottles, but we have a recording of the sound of a cork popping for the sommelier to play." |
Like it or not, screwtop
bottles are on the way
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
In New York about 40 years ago, a Catholic priest told me his two favorite sounds were the cry of a newborn baby and the popping of a wine cork. I have since learned he stole that line from Victor Hugo, but that makes it no less true.
I wonder what the priest or Victor Hugo would make of the current state of affairs. Babies still cry but corks are popping less and less as winegrowers accelerate a shift to the screwtop bottle. It’s happening faster than you might think. In New Zealand, a major wine-producing country, 70 percent of wine is already screwcapped and making its way to market.
Other producers--even the French--are beginning to see the aluminum screwtop as the future, and it is arriving in shops with alarming speed. If you don’t see it yet, that’s probably because the wine you drink is at least two or three years old. But all indications are that the corked bottle is on its way to the dustbin of history.
Wine snobs are aghast. The screwtop has become associated with cheap wines, so capping the better labels with the metal closure makes them seem cheap too. The very best labels will probably stay with cork, but they represent an infinitesimal proportion of the market.
Wine has a long history of closures, including wads of cloth stuffed in the neck and a float of olive oil on top. But cork, mostly from trees in Portugal, took over in the 17th century and has remained dominant until now. If screwtops continue their penetration, the Portuguese economy will be hit hard. Cork exportation is one of the country’s main international commodities.
Dozens of studies have been launched in the past six or seven years to try to resolve the debate over how to cap wine. Screwtoppers like to cite the faults of the cork. It is accepted that about 5 percent of cork-bottled wine has a corky taste. That’s why the waiter waits for you to sample it before filling your glass. Something called the Musty Taint Survey dealt with that problem. If it ain’t musty, it must be okay.
Scientists disagree over how much oxygen, if any, passes through the cork to allow “breathing” and speed the aging of wine, so that issue is on hold. What is clear is that the screwtop costs less, and avoids the problem of corky taste.
So we are at something of an impasse today. Winegrowers can’t argue with the chemistry of the cork or the economics of the screwtop, so they are inclined to go along with the cheaper solution. Still, some growers are resistant to the change. Real cork--not the plastic synthetic imitation--says quality.
One Cupertino, California, vintner argues in a lively wine blog that the cork allows the wine to develop “much greater complexity.” He rejects the screwcap, saying it results in a “quick decline of drinking enjoyment” as the wine oxidizes and develops odd flavors of plastic.
For consumers, though, the opposition is mainly about ritual. Isn’t half the fun of ordering wine in a restaurant watching the waiter wrestle with the corkscrew, finally pop out the cork, sniff it, then let you sip a sample and pronounce it drinkable or possibly even amusing? The ritual has become so stylized that most wine drinkers forget they are testing it for corkiness, not for a taste of freshly worn sneakers or mushroom musk (those are compliments, by the way).
All this ritual disappears with the arrival of the screwtop, and a lot of wine lovers and traditionalist growers are valiantly defending cork. Sadly, it’s like trying to push back the tide.
On a recent trip to Boston, I asked several restaurateurs what their customers would say if suddenly their $75 Burgundy arrived at the table and glasses were filled gushingly after a twist of the wrist. “Not good,” says Todd English, proprietor of the trendy Olives in Boston. “It removes all the romance from wine.” One of his waiters, Torrey Lane, chimed in: “It takes away from the glamour of wine service.”
A wine shop manager in Brookline told me the screwtop is already accepted on lower-priced wines plus some medium-range wines such as those from New Zealand, Australia, Chile and California. I asked him if he hears any grumbling from these customers. “Never,” he said. “A, they don’t know the difference, and, B, they don’t care.”
France, being a country wedded to tradition, is the least enthusiastic market for the metal cap. One leading Médoc winemaker, Jean Luc Zell of the Chateau d’Agassac, told me he is bottling only 10-15 percent of his 180,000 cases with screwtop closures and most of that is going for export where resistance is less formidable. “Screwtops are better closures,” he says, “but we will never be able to duplicate the sound of a popping cork.”
A wine marketer in Bordeaux tells me the reluctance to shift to the screwtop is mostly about snobbery. “Only a tiny proportion of Bordeaux wine needs significant aging anyway, so the question of oxygen getting in or not is irrelevant.”
Despite the arguments, many wine fanciers just don’t want to let go of the cork. “This is simply the beginning of the end of Western civilization,” laments Dean Tudor, a Toronto-based wine writer.
©2007 by Michael Johnson. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted April 23, 2007.
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