Just look at this picture.
Do you see the still-clear, still-young, still-fresh wine, on the left? Do you see the heavily oxidized wine on the right?
Do you see the still-clear, still-young, still-fresh wine, on the left? Do you see the heavily oxidized wine on the right?
A study took the same wine, years ago (a Semillon), and bottled it using different closure methods: traditional cork, ply-cork (small cork ring glued onto a meatloaf of glued, pressed cork chunks), Syncork (plastic cork), and screw cap. Then, they aged the wines in the same cellar, for a few years.
Guess what? The wine on the left, which remained the freshest, is the SCREW CAP bottle. The ones on the right are the syncork, plycork, and traditional cork bottles. The corks apparently allowed faster inflow of oxygen, which can cause too much oxidation, a bad thing in the case of most white wines. Even if you drank up this wine after two years (the top row in the photo), you wouldn't want that bottle on the far right.
So, at least for white wines meant to be drunk within a couple of years, are screw caps better? Maybe so. I still shudder at a dinner we attended years ago in Tulsa, where the host poured a dark gold wine that should have been nearly clear. It was totally oxidized, undrinkable. The worst part was that the host said, "well, it's past its prime," and didn't pour anything else :-( .
So, at least for white wines meant to be drunk within a couple of years, are screw caps better? Maybe so. I still shudder at a dinner we attended years ago in Tulsa, where the host poured a dark gold wine that should have been nearly clear. It was totally oxidized, undrinkable. The worst part was that the host said, "well, it's past its prime," and didn't pour anything else :-( .
But, it's not quite that easy. Other studies are finding a possible link between screwcaps and excessive mercaptans in wine. How would mercaptans get into wine? Winemakers are not able to avoid a small level of sulfides in the wine; it's a by-product of fermentation. One theory states that some oxygen transfer past the closure is needed, to keep these sulfides in their sulfide state; otherwise, without some oxygen, a reductive reaction can occur which creates foul-smelling mercaptans (rotten egg smell), which are arguably a bigger deal than TCA (which is easily detected and smelly, but is not harmful). Stay tuned.
As to red and white wines which are meant to age: for them, corks are OK in my book. You can't argue with the taste of a 30-year old First Growth Bordeaux. However, this study didn't consider the effect of TCA (cork taint, which arises from a combination of mold and chlorine, and can exist naturally on the cork bark or can arise in the winery). TCA allegedly impacts a fairly high number of bottles (up to 10%? although I haven't seen it, or maybe I don't/can't notice the slight cases). That is a tax that we should be less and less willing to pay, given the higher and higher cost of good wine. But, again, TCA doesn't seem to be bothering me.
Screw capping machines cost about $12,000, which puts them out of reach for all but the larger wineries. Someone needs to invent a simpler screw-cap system. How about a screw cap that can be just screwed on, with no machine needed? Now, THAT would be an invention! That is, IF screw capping turns out to be better, indeed.
As to red and white wines which are meant to age: for them, corks are OK in my book. You can't argue with the taste of a 30-year old First Growth Bordeaux. However, this study didn't consider the effect of TCA (cork taint, which arises from a combination of mold and chlorine, and can exist naturally on the cork bark or can arise in the winery). TCA allegedly impacts a fairly high number of bottles (up to 10%? although I haven't seen it, or maybe I don't/can't notice the slight cases). That is a tax that we should be less and less willing to pay, given the higher and higher cost of good wine. But, again, TCA doesn't seem to be bothering me.
Screw capping machines cost about $12,000, which puts them out of reach for all but the larger wineries. Someone needs to invent a simpler screw-cap system. How about a screw cap that can be just screwed on, with no machine needed? Now, THAT would be an invention! That is, IF screw capping turns out to be better, indeed.
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