Old-school wine snobs will tell you that the only proper way to bottle wine is with a cork closure, and look down their noses at these newfangled screw cap closures.
Those wine snobs are becoming fewer each year, as more winemakers are switching to screw caps.
Screw cap technology was first invented in 1889 for whiskey bottles, which had been using corks at the time. However, it was not until 1964 that the so-called Stelvin closure was invented by a French company, that screw cap closures became commonly used for wine.
The wine snobs will tell you that part of the romance of enjoying wine is the ritual of expertly removing the cork, then giving it a good sniff to see if the wine is good.
Unfortunately, cork is made from the bark of the cork tree, and harbours a bacteria known as Trichloranisole (TCA for short), and more commonly referred to as cork taint.
Winemakers try hard to sterilize all their corks before use, but due to the microscopic nooks and crannies throughout the cork, full sterilization is not always possible, leading to a tainted wine that tastes like musty wet newspapers.
Wines that are spoiled by cork taint can account for 3-5% of global wine shipments, so it is not surprising that winemakers strive to maximize their own profits by minimizing spoilage.
Unlike corks, screw caps do not dry out and shrink with age, which is the primary reason that wine bottles were traditionally stored on their sides, in order to keep the cork wet at all times.
Purists will claim that corks are very slightly permeable to oxygen, which allows the wine to slowly improve with age over the years. However, many wineries that bottle identical wines with a mix of corks and screw caps find no measurable difference after long aging, so this may be no more than and old winemaker’s tale.
When a cork does dry out, and they all do eventually, the wine will quickly oxidize, leading to a pungent and sulfuric aroma that ruins the wine. This is a particularly bad problem here in Alberta’s dry climate, as the tropical cork bark is native to moist tropical climes, causing it to dry out quickly in Alberta.
Although the Stelvin screw cap closure was invented by a French company, it has been the new world wine producers that have embraced it like no other, with Australia leading the charge. Even the premium Australian wines have gone almost exclusively to screw cap closures, and you would be hard pressed to even find an Australian wine with a cork at your local booze merchant.
Here in Canada, Tinhorn Creek Vineyards in the Okanagan Valley of BC was the first Canadian winery to switch to screw caps. Trials began in 2001, with the same bottling runs of wine being split evenly across cork and screw cap closures. Extensive feedback was sought from customers over the years, and no discernible taste differences could be found, causing the winery to switch exclusively to screw cap closures.
More and more winemakers are embracing the screw cap, as the new generation of boozers live in small condos without room for a wine cellar, and the days of aging a wine for later consumption are but remnants of a bygone era.
If anything, wines today are only trunk aged, meaning they are consumed the same day after bringing them home in the car, making the whole effort of carefully sterilizing and inserting corks to be somewhat futile.
Screw caps also serve to make wine a more casual and accessible drink, which helps dispel some of the myths about wine only being for stuffy old reprobates.
Your humble narrator is delighted with screw caps, as it allows me to store more bottles upright in the cellar without worrying about the corks drying out, leading to early spoilage. Being immune to both bacterial cork taint and premature oxidization are huge advantages for the burgeoning screw cap movement.
So throw off the shackles of centuries of wine snobbery and embrace the joys of the screw cap! Pick yourself up a bottle at your local booze merchant and deftly open it with a flick of the wrist, with no need for a complicated corkscrew!
