This is a subject that polarises people within the industry and leaves the customer feeling ill at ease with not knowing who is right.
Cork taint was a problem, no one can deny that, but were the stats correct?
Of all of the wine I have tasted I have only had 2 significantly corked wines. This leads me to suppose that the stats are slightly squewed to promote an alternative closure, that only saves the industry thosands of dollars but leaves the customer without the romance of history and opening a bottle of wine and not an industrial product like fizzy cola.
An average cork costs, in New Zealand, $1.50 when you compare the cost of a screwcap at $0.15c there are sums that don't need to much calculation to work out the wineries are saving a lot of money. I feel that it is at the expense of quality wine.
Yeah sure you can find all of the statistics to support screwcaps if you look hard enough, or you are a proponent of the Stelvin closure. The cork offers a more natural experience where what is in the bottle somehow reflects the season/vintage from which that wine was made.
The shear process of making aluminium stelvin closures is environmentally disaterous. One of the significant environmental consequences of aluminium production is the emission of perfluorcarbons (PFCs), powerful greenhouse gases which remain permanently in the atmosphere once released.
Harvesting Cork is a very natural process, where the bark of Quercus Suber the cork oak tree is taken every nine years and made into many items including that of cork closures for wine.
Having tried many of the same wines under both closures, I know what I prefer. If you want to drink wine that doesn't age properly and doesn't represent anything except generic juice then by all means drink wine under screwcap but don't inflict that industrial dross on the rest of us!
under screwcap but don't inflict that industrial dross on the rest of us!
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