From the Tasting Room - Screw Top Lids

Screw Top Lids

So what about those convenient screw-top lids?

Anyone who has been around for four decades knows that cheap wine comes with screw top caps and should be drunk while camouflaged in a brown paper bag. Indeed, most of us started with the sweet, inexpensive wines to which we added ice cubes and mixers. Today, a revolution is underway in the wine industry. No longer does screw cap mean cheap wine. Many Australian, California, and even some Oregon wineries are using screw caps on premium wines that cost as much as $140 per bottle!

The screw cap is an extremely consistent and efficient method to seal a bottle of wine. It is also inexpensive, but this technology is still young. There are no 20-year old Bordeaux wines or even 10-year old Oregon wines to attest to the historical success of the screw cap. No one really knows how the screw cap will affect the wine long term.

Panels of expert judges have taste-tested the same wine sealed with natural cork and screw caps. There is no clear consensus as to which is better. Some experts claim to taste a difference while others do not.

Bottles sealed with natural corks have a failure rate of 1-3%. A defective cork may allow air into the bottle to spoil the wine and/or wine to leak out. The industry recognizes this fact but simply accepts it as a cost of business. With screw caps the failure rate is about nil.

There is another indisputable fact--romance, ambiance and tradition surrounds the opening of a bottle of wine. When the waiter approaches your dinner table with the chosen bottle, the evening takes on a magic essence. The waiter brandishes his cork screw and carefully removes the cork. The cork is carefully examined and sniffed while the wine is poured into a glass to be examined, sniffed and tasted. The moment of truth is at hand....

Compare that to—Creeek! Glug, glug. Your wine, sir. Ever try sniffing a plastic and aluminum screw top lid?

Tune in next decade, folks, for the next thrilling episode....