Wine Article Index

To Cork or Not to Cork?

That is the Question

To paraphrase the Immortal Bard, William Shakespeare, that is the question many people who don’t know much about wine often ask themselves.  Because wine bottles have traditionally been sealed with a cork, it is often assumed that cork defines a wine as good (or if not good, then better than a wine with a screw top).  Let me dispel that myth for you now.  Before plastic, synthetics, and screw tops, cork was the best way to seal a bottle, however cork has its problems. 

Before we get into specifics, it’s important to know a bit about wine and how it ages.  Don’t worry, we won’t get into the chemistry of wine (no reason to bore you with winespeak).  There are basically three killers of wine: oxygen, temperature and light.  You can control the temperature and exposure to light by where you store it, but you can’t always control the entry of air into the bottle due to the cork.  We’ll discuss wine storage in a future article, but for the purposes of this article, all you need to know is to store your wines in cool, dark places.

Wine is actually a living, breathing organism that ages over time.  The three major factors that speed up the aging process are…that’s right, you guessed it: air, temperature and light.  Corks are porous and can allow small amounts of air into a bottle over time.  That can be disastrous for a wine, although aging helps many wines reach their full potential, eventually it will age too much and get stale, old and taste bad. 

The screw tops of today make an airtight seal and are better at stopping the flow of air into the bottle.  Years ago, many wineries tried the screw top, however there was something about that magical “POP” a cork makes and the American public just loves it.  As a result, the top wineries went back to cork.  Since cork is more expensive and getting harder to find, many lower end producers stayed with it, and thus the false association was made between screw tops and cheap, low quality wine.

As cork becomes more scarce, the number of high end producers using screw tops has increased.  Screw tops have become common among high end Australian producers.  Another alternative is the synthetic cork.  It looks similar to real cork, requires the use of a cork screw, and it makes that “POP” when opened.  You will see more of them in finer bottles of wine as well.

So next time you’re shopping for a wine, don’t shy away just because there is a screw top… as they say, “Try it, you might like it!”