Screwtops
Pro-Stelvin
testimonials, trickling in from wineries worldwide, are
raising voices against all corks, natural and plastic. We
report the findings and learned commentaries of three
respected wineries, Bonny Doon from Santa Rosa, California,
Mitchell from Clare Valley, Australia, and Kim Crawford from
Marlborough, New Zealand.
But first, let’s
begin with an oft-quoted voice from retail, Roger Ormon of
Brookline Liquor Mart, and hear from on-premise in a
statement from Scott Jellins, manager of Fleming’s Steak
House in Park Square in Boston.
Ormon speaks
from his office at Brookline Liquor Mart on Commonwealth
Avenue. “Screwcaps won’t have any strong, direct impact on
the industry as a whole. If it does, it’ll be one more aid
to desnobbification for the masses. ‘Say, these guys open
wine bottles just like I open my bottle of ketchup!’ Stelvin
seems to be the closure of choice. With silicon cork
replacements, we’re seeing people with difficulty in
inserting the screw, and needing extra muscle power to
extract it.
“Most customers
are open to an explanation of the reasons for the change. We
explain what we can; some wineries take a web page to inform
consumers, like Tin Roof Wines from Murphy-Goode in
Geyserville. In the broader perspective one may well ask,
‘What industry in its right mind would accept a 4 to 7%
defect rate?’ However, we can still expect a handful of
snobs not to buy a recommended wine because it does have a
screwcap.
“Now that Hogue,
one of the bigger players, has embraced the concept, you’ll
gradually see screwtops appearing on all but the snobbiest
of grand crus. Meanwhile work continues in the industry on
sniffing out the problems with processing and bleaching
natural corks.”
Jellins sees
more pros and cons in the restaurant market. He admits that
while “we still get our share of corked bottles,” he is “no
fan of screwtops. Synthetic closures do eliminate the
corking problem,” he adds, “but at a cost. The anaerobic
situation is not good for the wines and their development as
living, breathing organisms.”
Another problem
is the anti-climax of tableside presentation. “The waiter
presents a bottle and then goes through the cork-pulling
procedure, and presents the cork to the customer for
inspection. This is now minimized and beside the point with
screwtops.”
But he
acknowledges the necessity of screwtops. “Wineries that are
turning out only small quantities need to do all they can to
minimize cork taint. It’s a constant challenge.” Fleming’s
1OO-bottle wine list (all available by the glass) features
several screwtop bottles, such as Kim Crawford and Brancott
Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand.
CLARE
CORK STORY The
wineries, always on the cutting edge of the action and
innovation, are more universally optimistic about the future
of screwtops.
Jane Mitchell,
wife of winemaker Andrew of Mitchell Wines, Clare Valley,
Australia tells her story. “We started planting our
vineyards in 1975, and bought Shiraz vineyards, too. Most of
our grapes are estate grown. We produce about 3O,OOO cases,
mid-Oregon sized. The Clare style is not over-extracted or
American oaked. Our Shiraz is Rhone-styled, soft and
velvety, using French oak. We seek varietal fruit flavors.
We keep away from the locally popular Chardonnay and go with
other grapes that we feel do better in our
region.”
“We do meet
resistance to our putting reds in screw caps. Importers have
no problem, consumers want it, fine wine stores understand
it, but it’s the wholesalers who are balking. They think
it’s too hard for consumers to understand, but it’s they who
are overly familiar and enamored with corks.
“They tried to
introduce synthetics to Australia 3O years ago – that was
much too soon, and it got booed down. But today in
Australia, it is the quality wines that are using Stelvin
closures. Our most expensive whites are now in screw caps.
We’ve not experienced the stigma of cork snobbery down
under.
“The bottle we
use is one we imported from France in 2OOO. Andrew and the
Clare Valley grape-growers – sixteen of us – got together
with the French and said, ‘Look, we’re sick of corks
tainting our Rieslings; make a bottle for us.’ It cost us
$1, but the Riesling was preserved. We had exclusive rights
to it in 2OOO. But we started the trend, for everyone wanted
it in 2OO1. Now we have a new bottle facility in Adelaide
called Amcor, and a similar bottle costs us just 45 cents.
The French bottle has slightly higher shoulders than our new
one from Adelaide; they’re essentially the same
color.
PROOF
of the PUDDING “By
2OO2, all our production was in Stelvin. We still make 2O%
of our reds for export – to US and Europe – with corks. In
Australia, most producers are happy with Stelvin. With
Stelvin, the wines will age at the rate that we want them
to. Take two 1993 reds, for example. They will both have 11
years’ bottle age, but the Stelvin top will be much fresher,
more vibrant and in better condition. Zero oxygen! All
Stelvin is is ‘the perfect cork’, which doesn’t exist as
cork. People say, ‘Well the oxygen won’t get in.’ Well, you
don’t want the oxygen to get in and age it prematurely. This
way there’s no possibility of taint from without. Parallel
tastings have borne out the facts.”
Mitchell red
wines have exhibited no reported ill effects from Stelvin
closures, but do take longer to age. The 2OOO Old Vine
Grenache, made from 6O-year vines, shows spicy cherry fruit
to the fore. Unblended, it undergoes long skin contact and
carbonic maceration. Very ripe fruit attains alcohol of 15%,
but it is not overwhelming. No wood, it sits a year in tank
until egg-white fining, and bottling. Chilled in hot
weather, it’s well suited to curry and spicy Thai dishes.
Mitchell’s 2OOO Cabernet Seven Hills shows ripe blackberry
and rich cedar notes. Loam over clay makes it
concentrated.
“Stelvin is not
going to replace corks,” admits Mitchell, “but it will
gradually have its share. Some older people say: ‘Thank you!
Look at these hands! They cannot pull corks out of bottles
any more!’
“The problem
with corks is not so much one of poor quality through
over-cropping than it is though a disease inherent in the
cork tree. It cannot be eradicated from the trees, and must
be treated. You can’t tell the problem is there until the
cork affects the wine. The effect is instantaneous, and only
gets worse the longer the wine stays in bottle, or is opened
to oxygen.
Mitchell
recounts an anecdote attributed to fellow Aussie winemaker,
Jeffrey Grosset. “When Jeff was being interviewed on the
radio, a caller called in and said, ‘You can say what you
like about your Stelvins, but I love the romance of cork!’
Jeffrey paused a moment, then retorted: ‘If that’s your idea
of romance, I think you’d better get out a bit
more!’
SCREWTOP
YOUR VINS de GARDE
Randall Grahm, corquistador extraordinary and proprietor of
Bonny Doon Vineyards, Santa Cruz, returned your reporter’s
phone-call promptly, despite being preoccupied with
harvesting. As the witty winemaker of the eruditely
hilarious newsletter explained, “Well, it’s crush time –
funny thing, it happens about this time ever year – and I’m
up to my ears in Aligotés.”
Grahm waxed
eloquent on the closure issue. “We love screwtops. They’re
working out every bit as well as I’d hoped. We’ve got them
in 98% of our wines now, even for Cigare Volant
[high-end Rhone ranger]. The exceptions are a sweet
Viognier in 5OOml and a Port – neither bottle works work
with stelvin. Our distributors are fine with them now; it’s
a virtual partnership. Laggards are still the odd
unenlightened retailer or restaurateur, who are not yet with
the program and are worried about their customers
balking.
“There are so
many good points: ease of opening, lack of cork taint, wine
preserving its own freshness longer. It may seem
counterintuitive, but screwtops are perfect for vins de
garde, because they are more exclusionary of oxygen than
corks. The freshness factor amounts to drinking a wine from
a double magnum – without having to buy one! Screwcaps let
wines preserve themselves, age slowly and gracefully and
live longer.
“The Darwin
awards are right, erasing idiots from the gene pool. (Your
reporter quipped: “and should be extended to include
corkamamies.”) We may post overall awards for those people
who attempt to open a Stelvin top with a corkscrew. With the
imminent demise of the corkscrew, of course, some
entrepreneurs will be selling various apparati to open
screw-tops! Lots of the Californians are using them now:
Calera, Murphy Goode, Sonoma Cutrer – the list is
growing.”
To read Grahm’s
witty top ten reasons (twice over!) for ridding the world of
wine corks, log on at
www.bonnydoonvineyard.com/dooniversity/content/screwcap.
KIWIS
CONTRA CORKS
Further evidence that the ‘third’ hemisphere is fully
apprised and increasingly aboard on the no-cork issue comes
from Erica Crawford, wine-wife and spokesperson par
excellence for Kim Crawford Wines Ltd, Auckland, New
Zealand, arguably the Julia Child (tall, witty, elegant) of
Kiwi winedom.
“We’re
newcomers, buying grapes and making wine only since 1996. We
got really tired of buying bad corks, including the long,
expensive ones. We wondered, did we get the worst ones being
down in the bottom of the world? A full 1O% were bad. By
2OO1, we’d gone to all screwtops, including our
super-premium line.”
Crawford’s two
major arguments for Stelvin screwtops are cork taint and
oxidization. She presented them as part of a highly
entertaining Power-point presentation which also explored
New Zealanders’ charming quirkiness and punchy candor. She
claims 1O to 2O% of all cork-closed wine is either ruined by
cork mold, or – more subtly and insidiously – has its
flavors scavenged by the chlorine bath (2-4-6 trichlorasinol
TCA) used to counteract the mold.
Crawford’s model
for a Stelvin cap is one made by Pechiney of France. “Like
other screwtops made especially for wine,” read her notes,
“it is an aluminum capsule that houses the seal liner, which
consists of a layer of expanded polyethylene. The seal is
created through firm compression of the seal liner
[against the bottle’s mouth].”
“With Stelvins,”
she jokes seriously, “winemakers have no place to hide. If a
freshly opened bottle tastes off or dull or flat, you can’t
blame the cork any more!” (No problems at all were noted
with Crawford’s 2OO3 Marlborough wines; especially appealing
were a super-crisp, lacy, lime-scented Dry Riesling, a
golden and viscous, ripe white-peach, polished unoaked
Chardonnay, and a lean Sauvignon Blanc, grassy as a meadow,
with asparagus and Cranshaw melon notes and resonating
length.)
Oxidization is
always a potential problem with cork-stopped wines,
especially those kept a long while and those left standing
on retailers’ shelves. “Plastic corks are not the answer,”
avers Crawford. “Plastic stoppers are planed absolutely
straight, but the bottle bore – the glass in a bottle’s neck
– is subject to all sorts of ups and downs. These stoppers
lose their elasticity in time, and are subject to 1OO%
mortality by three years. What’s more, they may impart
plasticky flavors and aromas to the wine.”
ANTI-CORK
COMMUNITY GROWS
Californian wineries, from the large to the boutique, are
embracing the non-cork toppers. R.H. Phillips’ CorkAmnesty
marketing program has been hanging corks around the necks of
their distinctively high-shouldered screw-topped bottles.
Marketer Marta Rich tells us that Josh Jensen now screwcaps
Calera’s superb Viognier.
In Amador’s
Shenandoah Valley, the Sobon family’s venerable Shenandoah
Vineyards and Sobon Estate wineries continue to lead the
industry in implementing screw cap technology on their award
winning wines. Their first six screw cap-sealed vintages
have just been released. “Today’s advanced screw cap
technology totally eliminates the possibility of ‘cork
taint’ in wines,” explains veteran vintner Paul Sobon. “This
change assures our customers a more consistent wine
experience. We have always put the best wine possible in the
bottle. Now it is going to stay that way.”
Ken Onish of
Southern Starz – consortium of Southern Hemisphere wineries
from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa – lately wrote
a memo regarding the use of plastic corks in South Africa.
Local area representative Chris Zoski affirmed that over 3O%
of Southern Starz clients’ products are now closed with
screwtops.
Cape Classics,
another major South African importer, sent out a New Year’s
postcard introducing the screwcap initiative from Brampton,
the winery named after a prize bull. The card showed a
cartoon grinning bull with the caption “No more of that cork
bull!” The winery’s conversion covers most of its line:
Sauvignon Blanc, unoaked Chardonnay, Viognier, Shiraz, and a
Cabernet/Merlot blend (OVR).
ZOUNDS!
it’s a ZORK!
Speaking of champion quadrupeds, The Footbolt (Australian
winery d’Arenberg’s old vine Shiraz named for the winery’s
founder’s prizewinning racehorse in 1998, the centennial of
its birth) is now sealed with a Zork. No, that’s not the
underground kingdom of gamesters; it’s a screwtop-like seal
that requires neither corkscrew nor wrist twist. The
two-piece device uses a slip of aluminum foil that sits
between cap and plunger, thus preserving the screw-cap’s
proven metal barrier technology against oxygen
transmission.
Positive
features of the Zork are several. Zorks: a adapt to any
bottle shape; B can reseal the bottle once removed; and C
are totally recyclable – and little energy is used in their
manufacture. For more information, visit the Zork website at
www.zork.com.au.
To remove a
Zork, you pull on a tab that unwinds to reveal a
polyethylene plug. This plug, when extracted from the
bottle’s neck, emits a very cork-like pop!
Perhaps that’s
what Jane Mitchell had in mind for maintaining the audio
portion of the wine opening experience.
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