Uncorked indeed

A couple of months ago, at a wine-trade tasting, I discovered a really terrific wine. It wasn’t on sale outside Italy, but the winemaker was so pleased with my euphoria that he offered to send me a bottle. A week later, the man from DHL handed it over. Eagerly, I applied my corkscrew, then poured out a dollop, swirled, and stuck my nose into the glass. I’ll never forget the aroma. It was like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe horror story. If it had looked as awful as it smelled, it would have frightened a battalion of Marines out of their wits; it would have made a basement full of moldy newspapers smell like jasmine; it was – you’ve guessed — “corked.” Supremely, utterly, and disgustingly.
There is hardly a more confused or inflammatory issue in the wine business these days than how best to close a bottle. It’s the biggest topic on many wine Web sites, with hundreds of articles from around the world trailing long threads of crusty arguments, real puzzlement, sarcasm, well-meant speculation, voodoo “science,” industry P.R., and the kind of delusional thinking that keeps people buying diet books: Corks or screwcaps, “natural” versus manufactured, cheap or practical, convenience versus image? It’s all there, all over the place – in more ways than one.
Basically, there are three problems. The first is that corks can fail, and enough of them do, either by being tainted or leaking, to cause problems with wine. The second is that most corks require hardware, in the form of a corkscrew. In some circumstances – when it’s a special bottle, or the only one in the house, a gift, on a picnic in a remote spot, the annoyance can be considerable.
The third problem may be the worst: Fear and loathing. There’s no middle ground between the cork dorks and those who’d rather screw around, and no love lost, either. Each loudly accuses the other of being less ecologically correct, more venal, or plain stupid. The cork folks say more research is needed, the screwcappers say they’ve been around for more than 40 years and how much is enough, corkers counter that the taste of fine wine is enhanced by cork, challengers cite 25- and 30-year-old white wines found in perfect condition under screwcaps. A BBC TV show recently claimed that if we didn’t stick to cork, a lot of Portugal’s forests would be paved over by developers.
Meanwhile, the wine market (that’s us, folks) sends mixed signals. Several surveys over the years have indicated that corkscrews are an impediment to acceptance of wine for Americans. However, Nobilo, a New Zealand winery, just became number-one in sales of Sauvignon Blanc in America, beating out Kendall-Jackson; everywhere else in the world, the wine’s screwcapped, but it’s under cork for the United States, for “added prestige.” Bonterra, America’s leading organic producer just went over to screwcaps, with great success. In Italy, antiquated laws say screwcapped wines must forfeit the prestigious “Classico” designation, but leading producers Pieropan, Allegrini, and Isole e Olena have gone that way anyway.
Right now, 15 percent of the world’s wines are screwcapped (in Australia, it’s 70 percent, New Zealand’s at 90 percent), and the trend is up. Inexpensive California wines are increasingly being sent to Europe in bulk, and bottled there with screwcaps. Last year, the Australians sent a delegation to London to make a point with a blind tasting of identical Rieslings bottled with corks and screwcaps; a few weeks ago, Marilisa Allegrini did the same with a dozen reds and whites from the Veneto and Tuscany. In both cases, the results were the same – the screwcapped wines tasted better. Case closed, I think. With a twist.
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