Get over your screw cap phobias!

by Maggie Bernat Smith

For all of those who think the screw cap means "cheap wine", I am going give you some good reasons why wineries and wine enthusiasts love the screw cap. Sure I myself was skeptical when I started to see them flooding the market around the year 2000 (especially from Australia and New Zealand), however once I learned why the Stelvin Enclosure (official name of the screw cap) is the best thing for the wine, I gladly welcomed this into my life.

I'm not sure if you knew this or not, but when you order wine in a restaurant and the waiter or sommelier pours you a taste, it's not to let him know whether you like the wine or not, he's pouring it for you to detect cork taint or spoilage. Being in the wine industry and tasting wine constantly we come across "corked" wine all the time. There is a 5 - 7% chance that due to a bad cork your wine is ruined. Have you ever had a wine that smelled like your grandma's basement or wet cardboard or newspaper....that is from a contaminated cork (known as trichloroanisole or TCA for short) and that is what the waiter is asking you to detect. So if you you were a company that had a defect in almost 10% of your product, wouldn't you figure out a way to get rid of the wine killer?

I give the Kiwis and the Aussies credit for this major roll out of the screw cap. They took a huge chance with putting about 90% of their wines they produce under this stigmatized enclosure. They knew that the world was going to have an issue with it; sure, the screw cap has been around for about 40 years but these wines were usually bought at 7-11! The Aussies have always been innovators on the wine scene, they don't have the strict laws of the old world so they do a lot of experimenting with new technologies on the wine front. They have found that this is the best alternative to cork and does not affect the wine at all.

So whether you were holding a $500.00 bottle of Bordeaux for 30 years or whether you just picked up a bottle for your BYOB that night, and come to find out that your wine tastes and smells like wet cardboard.....think twice about at the new screw cap enclosures and preach the stelvin gospel!