Put a cork in it – or don’t

There’s something inherently sexy about popping the cork on a nice bottle of wine, but there’s nothing seductive about the smell of a cabernet that has spoiled when it should have been aging.
Oxidation and cork taint occur in just two to seven percent of all wines produced, depending on whose estimates you believe, but that’s enough to keep wine professionals scrambling for alternatives.
As they experiment with an array of new closures, they’ve inadvertently stirred up a new version of the old “paper or plastic” question: Which has the smaller carbon footprint?
Don Sebastiani & Sons is among the most adventuresome, sealing less than one percent of its bottles with natural cork. “It’s about quality control,” explains Donny Sebastiani, the firm’s marketing director. “Most corks have unacceptable failure rates.”
Except for a small line of high-end wines, the firm uses synthetic corks, screw caps, glass stoppers and, on its Hey Mambo wines, bright red Zorks that surround reusable stoppers with peel off plastic.
Don Sebastiani & Sons markets its wines to a young, hip consumer, so rather than apologize for its experiments, the company brags about them. It named one line with metal closures Screw Kappa Napa and posted a tongue-in-cheek “How To Screwcap” video on its Web site.
The companion “How to Zork” video recites five steps: Peel the plastic like an orange, pop off the stopper, pour the wine, replace the stopper and wrap the plastic peel around your wrist like a Lance Armstrong bracelet.
“We want to have fun and to make wine more approachable,” Sebastiani said.
While appealing to a more established consumer, Jeff Kunde of Kunde Estates Winery and Vineyards also likes to make light of the screw caps they use on white wines. He admits that unscrewing a lid doesn’t have the same drama as pulling out a cork, but it can be done with panache.
Kunde regularly teaches tasting room visitors how to break the seal with thumb and forefinger, and rest the cap on the inner arm near the elbow. By gently pulling downward, the cap unscrews as it drags against the forearm. Feeling extra macho? Accelerate the motion as you reach the wrist, propelling the cap through the air and into your waiting fingertips.
Richard Arrowood might do the same if he was producing wines to be consumed within a year or two of bottling, but at $55 and $100 each, his Amapola Creek wines are destined to be collected and cellared for special occasions.
“For aged wines, I always go back to the cork finish,” said Arrowood. “It’s still one of the best closures man has ever seen fit to use.
“Cork maintains its memory for a long time, keeps wine from leaking out and air from leaking in,” he said. “There is some slight air exchange that lets the wine age, without which red wines don’t age as well. Plastic doesn’t have the memory, and because it’s not as inert as cork, the taste can come through.”
Cork has taken the blame for wine that actually was contaminated in the winery, before it even hit the bottle, Arrowood said. Cleaning barrels and hoses with chlorinated detergent used to be standard practice at wineries, although chlorine compounds are now known to cause taint.
Quality issues aside, corks have another public relations problem. They come from the bark of Portuguese cork trees, are difficult to reuse in bottles without risking contamination and take decades to decompose in landfills. Yet while screw caps and plastic corks can be sent through existing recycle systems, natural cork can’t.
One Larkspur man is attempting to change all that by creating drop-off centers and encouraging wineries and restaurants to recycle their corks. Through ReCork America, Roger Archey has collected more than 300,000 corks and has found a Napa Valley firm that can shred them for use as compost in vineyards.
In Sonoma Valley, Chateau St. Jean, Ravenswood and Blackstone wineries have committed to in-house recycling programs. Three drop-off centers exist in Napa Valley – at V Wine Cellar at 6525 Washington St. in Yountville, and in Napa at Amorim Cork America, 2557 Napa Valley Corp. Dr. #A, and Portocork America, 560 Technology Way.
“There isn’t a drop-off site in Sonoma, but I’m actively looking for one in a place like a Whole Foods,” Archey said. Interested parties are urged to visit the Web site www.recorkamerica.com.