Vinceremos Organic Wine Blog

Corks and Closures – What works best?

Every wine-drinker has something to say about this subject. Corks? Screwcaps? Plastic stoppers? Just which of these is the best way to seal a bottle of wine? There is no definitive answer to this unfortunately, but there are plenty of facts which allow one to form an opinion.

The most static product in a bottle of wine is the glass bottle itself. That leaves 3 other substances – the cork, the air at the top of the bottle and the wine itself, all of which are very different from each other as one is solid, one is liquid and one is gas. Each of these 3 substances expands at a different rate, and cork has long been regarded as the most suitable method of coping with all 3. Certainly in terms of long term storage (i.e. for ageing) a quality cork appears to be the most effective method. The term quality refers to the type of cork normally found in more expensive wine – a good 2 inches long, and made from a single piece of cork as opposed to a recycled ‘reconstituted’ cork. In some cases the cost of the cork is higher than the glass bottle itself. A reconstituted cork is one made from many small pieces of recycled corks that have been compressed into a new seal – these sometimes have a single cork disc at one or both ends to prevent the tiny cork particles from crumbling. These are far less efficient for long term wine storage. Many of us have seen a cork that has started to disintegrate when being removed from a bottle – normally in older wines. Reconstituted corks don’t last as long and are not designed for ageing as they will disintegrate more quickly. The risk with a genuine cork is, of course, it’s potential to cause a wine to be ‘corked’ (see elsewhere for a detailed analysis of this fault). You can be sure that every single one of the grandest and most expensive producers has – if a cork seal has been used – experienced cork taint in their wine. Anything from 5-10% of wines sealed with a cork are reported to be ‘corked’ – there aren’t many industries who would accept a failure rate as high as this.

The next type of closure we commonly see are plastic corks or those odd looking bungs made of what appears to be tightly compressed foam rubber coated in plastic. Both of these are very effective for less expensive wines that are made to be drunk young. Wines sealed in this way cannot suffer from cork taint.

The last method of sealing a bottle, and one that is seen more and more these days, is the humble screwcap, or ‘Stelvin closure’. Do not be put off if your wine comes with a screwcap – a great many quality producers (Jerrey Grosset and Charles Melton of Australia for instance) are using screwcaps these days. They tend not to be used for wines designed for long term cellaring but as technology progresses the quality of the materials used is getting better all the time, and many believe that screwcaps will soon rival even the most expensive corks in terms of their ability to age wine. It’s also worth noting that the best quality screwtops are, in many cases, more expensive than conventional corks. So if you have to unscrew, rather than uncork, your wine it’s not necessarily a sign of cost cutting!

As a punchline, and something that relates to the wines we sell at Vinceremos, one of our favourite Alsatian producers, Jean-Pierre Frick, has decided to seal things in a different way. Anyone who has drunk one of these superb wines in the last 4 years or so will have been surprised to find a crown cap on top of the bottle (as on a bottle of beer). This is simply because Jean-Pierre likes to seal his bottles that way and it’s proved to be a very effective method – he doesn’t trust corks and dislikes screwcaps, it’s that simple!