So what’s the deal? An unconventional, opinionated California winemaker famously laid the cork to rest in 2002, staging two simultaneous funerals in San Francisco and New York. Eulogies were delivered and the wake featured copious quantities of screwcapped wines. Increasingly winemakers around the globe are testing and, in many cases, adopting alternate seals for their wines.

Corks have been the dominant closure for wine bottles until recent years, when alternatives increasingly found favour because of cork taint or TCA, short for trichloroanisole. (A corked wine is shudderinducing and has a musty, mouldy wet-cardboard smell.) While figures vary depending on who’s talking, anywhere from five to 10 per cent of bottles are affected.

Cork producers (they’re mostly Portuguese) have been hard at work to overcome the issue and have improved methods to sterilize cork that may help eliminate cork taint.
 

Corks and more

About 20 billion closures, worth an estimated four billion dollars, are used each year worldwide to seal wine bottles. Here’s a roundup of closures you’re likely to encounter:

Natural Cork:

These still dominate and will never entirely be replaced, no matter what comes down the pipeline. They continue to be the seal of choice for high-end wines and for many Old World producers who value tradition above all else, regardless of cork taint. They believe that wines age best under cork, and they’re an effective closure for Champagne and many sparkling wines.

Composite Cork:

This is made from natural cork and fused with synthetics. It looks like particleboard.

Synthetic Cork:

Made of high-grade thermoplastic elastomer, these are popular and generally used for modest-priced wines that will be drunk within a year or two.

Screwcap or Stelvin:

Screwcaps have come on gangbusters. Winemakers love them, because the wine in the bottle remains exactly as they’ve made it. Screwcaps make wine more accessible, remove the intimidation factor, and they’re a boon for restaurant servers. How popular are screwcaps? They’re in every winemaking country around the globe. In New Zealand, nearly 100 percent of wineries use them (corks are available for export markets). Australia is soundly on board, to the extent that Penfolds is using them on high-end whites. And they’re on every Tetra Pak wine, marrying modern packaging with clever closure.

Crown Cap:

We love this pop-top (the same as used on beer bottles), now being used on some sparkling wines. Italian Prosecco producer Mionetto is a huge adopter.

Zork:

This cool Aussie seal claims to have “the convenience of screwcap and the pop of a cork.” To open a Zorked bottle, break the seal, pull the spiral tab and the Zork pops out. Stick it back in to reseal the wine.

Vino-Lok:

This cool glass stopper is used on some German and Austrian wines and is making inroads into the USA and Canada. Twist off the metal cap and underneath is an elegant glass stopper like that on a decanter. The Vino-Lok is being touted as the ideal alternative to cork: it satisfies expectations in terms of both quality and esthetics, and it can be used to reseal the bottle repeatedly.

Pull Tab:

These are exactly what you find on beer and pop cans. We’ve found them on wines from the U.S., Australia, and Italy. Occasionally they’re being adapted to bottles such as sake flasks with ring-tab seals.

Others:

Closures such as plastic Champagne corks for inexpensive sparkling wine, and plastic taps on bag-in-box wines are common.
 

What do people want?

What have we learned from this “battle for the bottleneck”? If a recent survey in 55 countries is anything to go by, people want closures that are simple, secure and sincere (meaning taint-free).
 

The future

So far, there is no perfect closure. The cork chokehold has been broken and we’ll see diversification and variety. Screwcaps will continue to grow but it’s unlikely that they, or any other seal, will dominate. Synthetic corks are popular, but they’re not the final solution either. What a winemaker uses will depend on whether the wine is for immediate drinking or if it’s meant to be aged. To date, corks are the proven seal for wines that are cellared, because they allow oxygen to pass through into the bottle – a requirement of the aging process. Screwcaps are, however, showing excellent results in aging white wines. Winemakers will continue to search, test, and select the closure that best suits their wine.

Regardless of how a bottle is sealed, it’s all about the wine and the enjoyment it delivers.