Getting Screwed By Your Wine Closure?

By David Barringer

At a recent wine event we gladly enjoyed the crisp crinkling sound of the black screw top coming off our freshly bottled Escort Pinot Gris. Why you might ask? Well as hard to believe as this may be, we almost never can find a functioning cork puller at our home. Also, as this wine is fantastic (IMHO) we didn't want to take a chance on having to waste a single bottle due to 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA). Corked wine as it is better known smells like wet sheep dog or a dark damp moldy basement floor mat or well you get the idea. It doesn't smell like something you would like to drink or have at the dinner table with you.

Cork taint is caused by the interaction of bugs (micro fungi) and environmental chlorine. It seems that the once popular wonder bug killing cleaning agent wasn't always the vinters' buddy.
Even when winemakers switched to Hydrogen Peroxide or other cleaning agents we still had cork taint. It was discorverd that cork oak itself (Quercus Suber) had been naturally putting Chloroanisoles in the bark all along. Yes, corks come from the bark of real trees. So, in order to not lose about 4-9% of wine production to the little buggers many wine producers have moved to cork alternatives, like the screw tops and synthetic corks.

The synthetic corks are made of high-grade thermoplastic elastomer that allows them to compress and expand just like oak bark corks. They maintain the look, feel and most importantly the romantic pop of the natural cork. This type of cork can be found in bottles of our Oregon Foreplay and Vixen Syrah. They will never break in half or crumble when being pulled from the bottle. So while you will still need a wine puller to open the bottle you will rarely if ever have wine with TCA. Yes, even with synthetic closures TCA can come from other sources, like the oak barrel it self but it is very very rare.

Don't frett just yet about the death of natural cork though, as the wine industry has responded with methods to virtually eliminate TCA. The rosa system is a good example of a cork cleaning process to reduce TCA and sobate diamond process extracts the bad compounds from the cork with supercritical CO2. Natural Cork advocates also argue that the small amount of oxygen allowed into the bottle by natural cork aids in the bottle development of red wines. In fact at Naked Winery we use the natural cork closure on our big reds like the Missionary Cabernet Sauvignon for exactly that reason.

So what's the bottom line optimum closure? Technically the screw top is hard to beat as it doesn't have the TCA issue and does not let air into the bottle until you decide to open it up and drink. Add to this the fact that blind taste tests conducted on identical wines aged with corks versus screw caps found the tasters choosing the screw cap wine most of the time. Does this mean we'll all be using screws tops in the future? No. Absolutely not, as in real life we are not blinded during the experience of wine. Many people will continue prefer the feel and excitement (maybe nervousness as well) that occurs when we pop the cork!

Former silicon valley marketing executive, present day ski instructor and Oregon Winery Owner, David now spends most of his time in Hood River, OR with sons Joshua and Jason and wife Jody. Missionary Columbia Valley Washington Cabernet is his current favorite.