The anticipatory sound of a popped wine cork may soon be only a memory. If you haven’t already noticed, something akin to a dog’s chew toy is replacing traditional cork in the neck of many wine bottles. And, more recently, there has been an even more alarming trend.

            Jordan and I were at dinner in a new restaurant and, not seeing any of our usual wines, asked for a suggestion. What arrived at the table was a $40.00 bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon with a screw-cap. The waitress made a few jokes and tried to fake the sound of a cork popping. Frankly, although the wine we had was terrific, I’m not sure that we would have ordered it if we knew it would come sans cork. It brought back visions of far too many university suppers consisting of spaghetti and jugs of cheap Italian red.

            I began to think that the cork tree population must be in dire straights; on the brink of distinction. I didn’t have to look far to find out the true reason for the movement to replace the traditional cork.

            Cork comes from an evergreen oak tree that grows predominately in Portugal. A typical tree can live to 200 years old, “donating” its bark as often as every 9 years. Cork is all natural, recyclable, biodegradable, sustainable and not on the verge of dying out. So, why would anyone want to replace this perfect stopper? Well, it’s not so perfect and wine producers have for years been looking for alternative means to stopper their products. Wine making is a risky business at best. With worries about weather and lousy growing seasons, the last thing wine-makers need is to have bad cork spoil their wines. Bad cork accounts for the loss of millions of dollars every year and the waste of as much as ten-percent of wine produced.

The perfect cork is easy to insert, completely seals the bottle, allowing only a small amount of air to enter over a period of many years for proper maturation of the wine, and is easy to remove. Besides obvious structural flaws such as corks that break or won’t come out at all, a bad cork can cause bacterial contamination, can allow too much air to get into stored wines causing them to oxidize or go flat, and can produce a chemical called trichloroanisole (TCA) which causes the wine to become “corked”. The structural properties of natural cork that make it a good stopper also allow millions of bacterial and fungal spores to “hide out” in its tiny fissures. In the past, manufacturers have sterilized their corks with chlorine, but the chlorination process leads to the production of TCA.  All plants produce phenols as protection against bacteria and fungi. When bacteria process these phenols, they produce a substance known as anisole and when this substance is chlorinated, TCA is formed. In minute amounts, TCA can noticeably alter the flavour of a light and fruity wine, and in larger amounts, will produce a smell and taste said to be like wet, mouldy cardboard. This is known as “corked” wine.

Although cork producers have been aware of the problem and have made some attempt to correct it by eliminating chlorine and using other methods such as micro-waving to eradicate bacteria, there has been little consistency in the industry. Wine producers, predominately from Australia, New Zealand and the States, began experimenting with alternative stoppers. It shouldn’t be surprising that it is the relative newcomers to the wine industry who have dared to take this scandalous plunge. Considering the hundreds of years of tradition behind the wineries of Europe, you can imagine that they might be a little more resistant to change.

 Some wineries have switched to a synthetic “cork” but there can still be problems. They sometimes do not seal the bottle tight enough and too much air can get in. They are also sometimes hard to remove, and Jordan swears that they will ruin your corkscrew. But for short-term storage wines, these appear to becoming popular. One of my favourite New Zealand Cabs has a plastic “cork”. I like it because the cork is great for re-closing the bottle. A short-term storage wine is one that may only require one or two years to age. Then there are the really short-term storage wines, like the ones that Jordan and I have made on Gabriola. We might just as well stopper them with Silly Putty!

            I popped in to our neighbourhood wine shop today and spoke to the owner about screw-tops. Nancy says that the screw-top is the way to go for short-term wines, which make up easily ninety-percent of wine purchased. While she admits that it will be an up-hill sell, she is a full proponent of the cap for less expensive wines. (I know that Nancy means wines under $50.00.) As an added bonus, she says that it’s great for people like she with arthritis in the wrist. She pointed out a few brands, and the obvious “sell” is a campy, dare-to-be-a-rebel one.

The wine I picked out came with a tag that listed all of the New Zealand wineries currently belonging to the “New Zealand Screw-cap Wine Seal Initiative.” That makes it sound more prestigious, doesn’t it? The screw-top is best used for wines that do not need further aging and are ready to drink right away. Of course, because this is still a relatively new process for these wineries, it will take years of side-by-side studies to understand the subtle difference between screw-top and natural cork aging. Maybe I can volunteer as a lab assistant.

After talking with Nancy, I felt better about going to the till with my purchase. Although, I could swear that the clerk made an extra effort to wring the top of the brown paper bag around the neck of the bottle. But I know that when I open that bottle for dinner tonight, it will taste exactly like the one we had at the restaurant the other night. I may not be a poor student anymore, but I do hate paying twenty bucks for mouthwash!