Decanter World Wine Awards
Inexpensive wines, it’s worth stressing, won’t remain in glass bottles forever: sooner or later there will be attractive, lighter alternatives which are cheaper and less energy-intensive to produce, to transport and to recycle. At that point, the debate becomes irrelevant for ‘most wine’.
For mid-priced wines, screwcaps are the ideal closure -- if you are the kind of consumer who is dismayed by the possibility of cork taint or random oxidation. But what if you are the kind of consumer who is dismayed by the possibility of boring, predictable wine?
Screwcaps have won the day in Australia, but the result, in combination with the execrably dull bottles produced by Amcor, is a packaging sweep on the wine shelves of narcotic uniformity. Whatever their technical virtues, many screwcapped bottles look and feel homogenous, and rightly or wrongly suggest to their drinkers that the contents might be exactly that, too. Cork brings a little excitement, a little ritual, a little lump of the natural world and, from time to time, more than a little exasperation.
How much exasperation? In this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards, some 3.3% of the 14,120 entries were dismissed as TCA-spoiled – though 10% of those wines turned out to be either screwcapped or non-cork stoppered. Another 0.9% were dismissed as oxidised, though almost 20% of those wines were under screwcap or other closures.
When it comes to fine wine, we are still a long way from knowing which closure is really ideal for which wine, largely because fine-wine producers in the great regions of Europe find little or no global consumer pressure to switch. The evidence that screwcap might be better (or worse) for the world’s fine-wine benchmarks is, thus, missing.
Riesling and screwcap looks like a happy combination, but I remain open-mindedly undecided about whether fine red wine might be better under cork or screwcap, even those screwcaps designed to allow some oxygen ingress. (As Brian Croser pointed out when I discussed the issue with him earlier this year, that ingress will remain constant under screwcap, year after year after year, whereas with cork the levels of ingress will alter as the cork itself becomes pregnant with wine.) I’m also undecided as to whether screwcap is ideal for richer white wines in which secondary characteristics are valued, or for sparkling wines saturated in CO2 in which secondary characteristics are also sought.
Consider, moreover, the ‘total experience’. Any fine-wine producer bottling their wine under screwcap implies, by this choice, that he or she is zealous to control and if possible guarantee the quality in bottle of the wine he or she has created. Fine; that’s laudable. But it has implications for the way the wine was brought into being, too.
Do I want my wine made by a controlling zealot? Can controlling zealots make great terroir wine? Won’t they also be serial adjusters and ‘ameliorators’? Might terroir wine not be better made by those with a little reverence for nature in general? Can you, indeed, control quality? Doesn’t, in fact, the embrace of nature mean the embrace of an endless chain of differences, and at a certain point the relinquishing of control over quality? In other words, might you not get a more interesting bottle under cork than you could expect under screwcap -- for reasons which have nothing to do with tca or random oxidation, and everything to do with a certain wine-creating philosophy?
I realise that these questions will be intensely irritating to those fine-wine producers who see themselves as using screwcap to preserve the print of the vineyard. They have to be asked, though, since I am convinced that fine-wine consumers mill them over, consciously or subconsciously, when they purchase and enjoy expensive, ambitious wines. When such consumers come across a corked wine, they don’t necessarily wish the wine had been screwcapped; they may simply wish the producer had bought better corks.
I was struck, back in Australia in May, to see how many of Australia’s younger and more avant-garde producers prefer to use cork rather than screwcap nowadays. I admire their bravery, since they risk the formidable wrath of the new wine establishment. What are they saying to consumers? One of the strongest messages, I suspect, is that they value nature and ‘the natural’ over technical mastery and control. Even at the expense of a 3% failure rate. And we learn (since these wines sell well) that their consumers don’t mind.
Have your say!
Matt Moore
October 26 14:01
I'm a consumer. I buy wine rather than getting it sent to me for free to review. I like it when it doesn't taste awful and I don't feel like I've wasted the money that I've spent time away from my family earning. Maybe that makes me some kind of creativity-killing fascist. I can live with that.
I am reluctant to buy certain natural wines because I suspect the products will be too variable to provide enjoyment. A dinner party turns into a wine version of The Deer Hunter with Taint Roulette. And I am no Christopher Walken.
The natural wine movement no doubt turns out some interesting wine and its efforts can be seen as part of a broader consumer trend around "artisanal" production that contrasts with (i.e. is in opposition to and yet is also defined by) mass production. Which I have mixed feelings about . In the same way that I have mixed feelings about my wife using a retro iphone camera app that actually degrades the UX of her device but has all kinds of pre-digital emotional resonances.
I would suggest that the container/screwcap/natural yeast/biodynamic debate in wine needs to be seen as part of a cluster of broader issues playing out in society (around authenticity/modernity/consumption) - but I'm not sure that most wine writers have the mental tools to deal with it.
Andrew Jefford / Decanter - prove me wrong!
Huon Hooke
October 20 07:34
Any winemaker worth his/her salt tastes each barrel before blending and bottling, and rejects barrels that are tainted or otherwise not up to par. They have no such chance with cork: the faulty ones can only be identified when it's too late. It seems faintly absurd to me to spend your lifetime and all your money and effort labouring to produce a great wine only to risk ruining it at the final moment by hammering a potentially dirty piece of bark into the bottle.
Hylton McLean
October 17 23:58
Interesting and thought provoking article.
Natural wine corks have non-uniform elasticity and glass bottles using "blow-and-blow" technology have dimensional irregularities in the bottle neck. Thus a stiff cork in an oval shaped bottle neck equals bottle variation due to oxidation. Nothing to do with romance but a lot to do with chance and bad luck.
Werner Van Damme
October 16 18:05
"Cork brings a little excitement, a little ritual, a little lump of the natural world and, from time to time, more than a little exasperation."
No, cork only makes some bottles less good than others (the ones with the perfect cork). How would you like to buy a "exciting" new car to discover the heating or second gear doesn't work?