ITALIAN FINE WINE AND ALTERNATE CLOSURES

No matter what your opinion on alternate wine closures, they are an indisputable part of the industry’s future. As a testament to this, Italian authorities have approved the use of synthetic corks and screwcaps on higher quality DOC and DOCG wines for the first time. The move opens a new front in the highly-charged wine industry debate on closures. Synthetic cork producer Nomacorc is eagerly looking at ways to dent the dominance of natural corks in DOC and DOCG wines. Caldirola, producer of Barbera d’Asti, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and Chianti among others, confirmed it is interested in taking advantage of the new rule. Silvia Fiorentini, marketing manager for the Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico, said individual denominations still have the final say on closures. “Certainly it will not be possible to use alternative corks or screwcaps without a formal change of our production code,” she said. ‘The Consorzio is open to taking it into consideration,’ she added. Nomacorc is the word’s second biggest wine closure producer, selling around 2.4 billion synthetic corks annually, behind natural cork maker Amorim, which sells just over 3 billion closures per year.