Screw Tops - Friend or Foe

Being part of the younger generation in the wine industry I have a great advantage. So many people are stuck on what they call tradition in the wine industry and are willing to risk the quality of their product over it. When I confront many people in the wine trade about why they do not use screw top closures, I am often given the same five arguments:

1) Corks have been a tradition for hundreds of years.
2) Corks and opening the wine is the most romantic part of the wine.
3) Consumers are not willing to pay for wines in screw tops.
4) Wines closed with screw tops do not age as well.
5) Wines closed with screw tops have “reductive” issues.

In general I find these statements almost amusing at times. I do believe in understanding history in order to better ourselves today. Therefore, understanding corks and what positive attributes they have is essential in understanding how to make wine in alternative closures. That does not mean I need to stick with the “traditional” closure that causes between 5-7% of wine (equivalent to about 1 bottle per case) to be noticeably off. When I say noticeably off, I mean a wine that wreaks of moldy newspaper, or a musty old basement (musty basements are also traditional in the old world, now we have de-humidifiers). This odorous flaw to the wine is created by a chemical called TCA (2-4-6 Trichloroanisole) which can be found technically on any thing that contains phenols (woods, plastics, grape skins and therefore wine, etc) when it comes in contact with certain sterilizing agents and a mold. This tends to be the show most within corks because if it comes from somewhere else, it will ruin the entire vintage of the wine. The problem with the corks is that it creates an inconsistency and an unknown after the wine is bottled. Tricholoanisole is incredibly potent. Studies show that the average person can detect TCA at a level of 4 parts per trillion in wines. Some critics have proven to be able to sense TCA at levels hovering around 1 ppt. To put in easy terms, that is the equivalent to approximately one sugar cube in 100 Olympic size swimming pools. It must be noted however that TCA is completely harmless to human beings; it is only detrimental to the aroma and flavor of the wine. Just think if other industries accepted a 5-7% failure rate, how different the world would be today.

The second statement of opening the bottle of wine being so romantic is really strange. Most of the time this process works out to be quite the opposite. How many times have we all gone to open a bottle of wine and the cork snaps in half? Then we all have the opportunity to look silly trying to dig that last 1/8 of an inch cork out of the bottle before we finally end up just puncturing it into the wine itself. There is also the instance of when you are trying to pull the cork out of the bottle and you pull to hard and a splash of your favorite Syrah splashed all over your dates new white shirt. Ok, well maybe that only happens to me, but it could happen to any of us. This could be stopped by also using one of these new high tech corkscrews that look like they come from the space age, but then how could you argue that it is traditional or romantic. Lastly, what if you go down to your cellar and select the last bottle of a special vintage for your 25th anniversary, come up from the cellar and go through the whole romantic routine of opening the bottle, just to find that it smells of moldy newspaper? Is it still romantic?

The statement of consumers not being willing to pay for wines under screw top, particularly for ultra premium wines has never been substantiated. Many people in the wine industry have under-estimated our wine buying public. At Tarara Winery our currently top selling wine is the first screw top closed wine we have released. It is a red blend (current vintage is Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot) that sells for $25.00 per bottle. This is only the first of the Tarara lineup to be closed with screw tops; we will be 100% inside of a year when the 2007 reds and 2008 whites are released. In many areas of the world screw tops are just though of as routine now. Look at Australia and New Zealand, they have about 85% closed with screw tops and that includes top end Reds and Whites well exceeding $100 per bottle. There are now Grand Cru Burgundies, top Loire Valley and some top producers of North East Italy (Veneto) using screw tops. These wineries have done this because they realize that the consumer just wants a great bottle of wine, and if the odds are better with a screw top then that is probably OK with most of us. Besides, if the best part of a bottle of wine is opening it, then it is a bad bottle of wine.

Many people have told me that wines do not age well in screw tops. I have also been told that they have not been tested to have shown being successful aging. These closures are no longer new, and there are many examples of wines from the USA, Australia, and New Zealand that have been aging gracefully under these screw tops for well over 15 years. The beautiful part of these wines is that they in some opinions age better. They gain lovely tertiary characters that are normal from aging, while also retaining freshness and lively fruit creating a wine of better complexity and balance. Are they identical to the wine with a cork, NO.? But then again after 10-15 years no two wines with corks are going to be identical either, each bottle will age slightly different under a cork so there is very little consistency. With the screw tops there is much more consistency bottle to bottle, even after extended aging. Here at Tarara Winery we create many wines that we believe will age gracefully for well over a decade. Some of our first vintage (1989) are drinking beautifully today. We think that using screw tops is just one more step to ensuring that our wines will be great upon release and after aging for years.

The last comment I here normally comes from people within the wine trade, and cork producers. There are many believers that wines closed under screw tops suffer from Reductive qualities. This is when sulfides (naturally present in wine as well as being added at times) reduce down to create off flavors like rotten egg. This has happened in the past before winemakers became more knowledgeable about the newer technology. Today winemakers can be far more diligent in making their wine to be certain that there are no reducible sulfides in the wine before bottling through proper oxygen management and by using fewer sulfides. This is one of the huge perks to wine in screw tops. It is possible to create the wine with less sulfides (which protect against unwanted yeasts and microbes as well as oxidation) since it is a more anaerobic environment. Those that believe that wine with elevated sulfides may want to look at screw tops since there is not as much necessary to do the same job.

All and all, screw tops are one of many newer forms of closures for our wines. It is not about ruining tradition, the romance of wine or a cheaper way to close our entry level wines. Screw tops are a modern way to be certain that the wine ends up on the dinner table exactly as the winemaker meant for it to taste. It is about taking an age old beverage that makes so many of us happy, and using modern technology to make certain the consumer has the opportunity the fruit, the winemaking process and the terroir we are so happy to have without having to look through a musty newspaper aromatic.