Do you know where cork comes from? Portugal is a huge producer of cork for lots of purposes, including corking the contents of your favorite wine labels. So it was shocking when one of the leading producers of Portuguese wine announced they were abandoning cork closures for their wine in favor of screw caps. The winery is Quinta do Cotto, described as one of the top wine producers in the country. It gave the simple reason for leaving cork behind that it is just too expensive. At least the cork industry was spared the indignity of hearing the truth: that wine is kept fresher and livelier when topped with a screw cap instead of a cork plug. Give me a screw cap any day for my white wines for two reasons: one, it keeps the wine's integrity in tact and two, it's faster to open!
Friday, April 21, 2006
Screw Caps Over Cork
Do you know where cork comes from? Portugal is a huge producer of cork for lots of purposes, including corking the contents of your favorite wine labels. So it was shocking when one of the leading producers of Portuguese wine announced they were abandoning cork closures for their wine in favor of screw caps. The winery is Quinta do Cotto, described as one of the top wine producers in the country. It gave the simple reason for leaving cork behind that it is just too expensive. At least the cork industry was spared the indignity of hearing the truth: that wine is kept fresher and livelier when topped with a screw cap instead of a cork plug. Give me a screw cap any day for my white wines for two reasons: one, it keeps the wine's integrity in tact and two, it's faster to open!
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2 comments:
Screw caps don't really keep the wine fresher. They avoid "corked" wines which are wines tainted by an enzyme that resides in "natural" cork and spreads when exposed to certain environmental and chemical combinations. You will know when you taste corked wine--it smells like a wet, sweaty horse. The disadvantge of screw caps is that they seal the wine in and don't allow for any further aging once capped--something that can take place with a cork and is almost essential to great, bottle aged reds.
Screw caps don't really keep the wine fresher. They avoid "corked" wines which are wines tainted by an enzyme that resides in "natural" cork and spreads when exposed to certain environmental and chemical combinations. You will know when you taste corked wine--it smells like a wet, sweaty horse. The disadvantge of screw caps is that they seal the wine in and don't allow for any further aging once capped--something that can take place with a cork and is almost essential to great, bottle aged reds.
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