GOOD DRINKING
WITH
GAEL ARTHUR
MAKE MINE SCREWCAP ©

....
One bottle has a cork closure, the other, a screwcap
...Does the same wine taste different when different closure systems are used?

Saturday morning, the perfect time to test your palate. The organizers of our 10.15 seminar have the right idea: Start with a little Breakfast wine (a lovely Stoneleigh Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, in screwcap, of course) to cleanse the palate and awaken the taste buds.
Then, down to the hard work, with twelve wines to taste.

For this Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival seminar, it was perhaps a case of preaching to the converted. “Taming of the Screw” offered an opportunity that was hard to pass up: Taste wines that are identical with one exception: one bottle has a cork closure, the other, a screwcap.


For the most part, participants were very well educated consumers, or in the wine and hospitality industries. Everyone was curious: Does the same wine taste different when different closure systems are used?
Why all this fuss about screwcap when cork has been used for centuries?

Why indeed. Between two and ten percent of wine is “corked” – tainted by a nasty little chemical called 2,4,6 tri-choloranisole (TCA). At very low levels (a trained nose can discern 6 parts per trillion), TCA can make wine smell dank and musty.

At higher levels, the bright fruit that was in the wine when it hit the bottling line is masked by a cardboard and even bitter taste. In short, it is no longer the wine as it was intended, not the wine you want to serve your dinner guests tonight and certainly not the wine you want to cellar for your firstborn’s twenty-first birthday.

The issue of cork taint is nothing new, but the serious commitment to research and change on the part of winemakers all over the world now makes it possible to assess the performance of the admittedly less romantic alternative.

 

Romance and the popping of a cork seem inextricably bound in the minds of many. But, someone at the seminar put it best: If you need the tradition and romance of the opening and presentation of a cork at a romantic dinner, you are having dinner with the wrong person.

Co-presenters DJ Kearney and Mark Taylor guided participants through the basics of corkiness, then turned discussion over to the six panellists, representing a very diverse collection of wineries.

The wonder of it all was that France and Germany were up on the podium along with Australia, Canada and the United States. The times, they are a-changing.

What a delight to see the André Lurton La Louvière Sauvignon Semillon 2003 (retailing at $55.49 in British Columbia) in screw cap.

The oenologist admitted that 1000 of the 5000 cases produced were done in screwcap. His pronouncement was that the two wines were identical, but most of the people I spoke with after agreed with me – the screwcap wine is livelier and fruitier.

The most important thing to note here is that the wine has been in the bottle less than six months. The real test will come three to five years down the road. La Louvière is a long-life white Bordeaux, with the producer maintaining that it will age up to 20-30 years. This vintage will undoubtedly improve over the next few years – I’d love to have a case of it (in screwcap!) to try once a year.

The seminar suffered from one flaw – the wines are still so young that the difference between cork and screwcap are small. While David Lawrason, of Wine Access magazine, commented that he could discern the difference in each of the wines, invariably finding the screwcap version more alive, the average punter might not taste the difference just yet.

My own notes indicate something noteworthy for three of the six wines (the others could easily be put down to bottle variation). The wines were not tasted blind.

This is an experiment that bears repeating in three or four years. I am hoping that someone has managed to squirrel away samples of each of the wines for a future tasting.

For the home consumer, Tinhorn Creek (one of the participants) has a brilliant marketing package: a two-pack of the 2001 Oldfield Collection merlot, one with cork closure, one with screwcap. They challenge people to taste the difference. What a great way to start a wine dinner with friends.

While the issue of cork quality is not new, tradition, lethargy and the belief that cork enhanced wine aging delayed the search for an alternative until the 1990s, when various polymer products came on the market.

The Australian Wine Research Institute undertook a major study to compare different closures, including the less glamorous, but practical screwcap.

The research evaluated not only cork taint, but also oxidation, which leads to browning of wines.

Several Clare Valley wineries in Australia began by bottling some of their 2000 Rieslings in screwcap – to see why, take a look at Semillon using fourteen different closure systems (the wine was twenty-eight months in the bottle when the picture was taken – that’s the screwcap on the far left).

Today, Australian wineries are embracing screwcap with enthusiasm. They have addressed some of the market issues (consumer resistance being much less than anticipated) and wineries like Wirra Wirra put all their whites under screwcap and 95% of total production.

Aside from a few garage wineries with miniscule quantities, the American shift to screwcap began with Randall Grahm, Bonny Doon’s eclectic producer of wonderful wines and marvelous packaging. A small producer with high visibility, Grahm has bottled his entire North American production (about 80,000 cases) in screwcap, even holding funeral services for the cork in both New York and San Francisco. As a publicity stunt, it probably won him a lot of accolades, but the real burial of the cork will come when the big players in the American wine industry take the plunge.

Tom Pennechetti of Cave Springs Winery identified one of the big challenges: “My biggest beef with screwcap closures is that they are, well, simply put, quite ugly. For me, until they make them very clean and eliminate all those wretched lines around the cap, they will be a second choice from the design point of view.”

The designers have been at work. RH Phillips is bottling more than 300,000 cases of wine, not in the Stelvin™ closure that the Antipodean wine producers use, but rather a sheathed cap that hides the threads inside. The Vincor company took the opportunity to redesign bottles and labels to really distinguish the shift in technology and the effect is a far more elegant package.

With all this competition facing cork producers, there is no question that they have been working at quality improvement – the big question is whether it is too little too late. There will always be winemakers who stick with cork and they should benefit from the efforts to reduce the frequency of cork taint.

In the end, consumers will determine what form of closure will prevail. But what consumers accept will be driven by the industry and education.

Teach a person what a corked wine smells like and chances are they won’t resist a screwcap. Restaurateurs can take a lead role in the process, changing the image of screwcap. Whereas it used to indicate a cheap industrial product, as more quality producers embrace the packaging, it will become associated with quality assurance.

My money is firmly on screwcap. Now if I can just find a few bottles of that La Louvière to stash away in the cellar. And maybe a few of the Evans & Tate while I am at it.

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Wines Tasted:

Moselland Piesporter Michelsberg Riesling Kabinett 2003
www.moselland.de

André Lurton La Louvière Sauvignon Semillon 2003
www.andrelurton.com

R.H. Phillips Chardonnay 2003
www.rhphillips.com

Tinhorn Creek Oldfield Collection Merlot 2001
www.tinhorn.com

Evans & Tate Margaret River Redbrook Cabernet 2002
www.evansandtate.com.au

Wirra Wirra McLaren Vale “Church Block” Cab-Shiraz-Merlot 2003
www.wirra.com.au

 

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