In the past few weeks I've chatted with a number of winemakers from various countries -- Italy, France, Australia and New Zealand among them -- and the issue of cork versus screwcap seals on wine has come up each time.
I'd thought there was some sort of consensus, at least that screwcaps were perfectly good for wines intended to be drunk young, like nearly all on the LCBO General List (that is, not in Vintages).
During the same period, I had the opportunity to taste hundreds of wines from the LCBO General List, and I was surprised at how many are still sealed with natural cork. A lot have what are generally called "artificial corks," but relatively few (other than New Zealand and Australian wines) are under screwcap. A lot of General List wines, of course, are in Tetra Pak format.
I think one of the strongest arguments for screwcaps was made by Richard Rowe, the chief winemaker for Evans & Tate, a Western Australian producer of excellent wines. (Look for their "X & Y" Shiraz coming in the Vintages release on July 21 and the Evans & Tate Shiraz in the Sept. 1 release.)
Mr. Rowe is on the "no-oxygen" side of the screwcap debate -- that is, he believes that wine doesn't need oxygen to develop. The other side of this debate argues that oxygen is necessary and natural corks are superior because their pores allow very small amounts of oxygen through to the wine.
That debate isn't of much interest to ordinary consumers, who just want good wine when they remove the seal, whatever it is. So, Mr. Rowe's next point is important: that because cork is a natural product (it's the bark of the tree), each cork is slightly different. That means that in a case of wine, each of the 12 bottles has a different seal, producing more variation among the bottles.
Anyone who's opened two or three bottles of the same wine knows what that's like. Sometimes it's all right, and the variations simply mean that one bottle tastes different from the others, but they are all perfectly good. But it can also happen that one is faulted, either because of cork taint or because the cork has dulled the flavours.
I was reminded of a visit to an Oregon winery a few years ago where the winemaker had set out a few dozen glasses of fairly neutral white wine, each with a natural cork floating in it. You could easily smell the cork in a number of them. The winemaker lamented that they spent years growing and tending the vines, months making the wine, and that it could all be undone by the piece of bark stuffed into the neck of the bottle.
Is there anyone still seriously wedded to the idea that the ritual of removing a cork is more important than the quality of the wine inside the bottle?
Four good, flavoursome reds today.