Enclosures
Written By: Brian Freedman on Mon, Apr 27th 2009
Cork has come in for a lot of criticism in recent years, and the race to find a replacement has reached a fever pitch. Not that cork is all bad: Indeed, it has served the wine industry well for hundreds of years. It allows an appropriate exchange of oxygen to occur between the wine in the sealed bottle and the outside world. The issue is that it can (a) dry out, rendering the wine it was supposed to protect little more than vinegar, and (b) it can get infected with a microscopic fungus called 2, 4, 6 TCA, which makes the wines inside smell like a mildewed basement or a stack of damp newspapers. TCA infection is where the famous term “corked” came from, not actual pieces of cork falling into the wine.
Synthetic corks seemed like a good bet to replace natural ones for a time, but they have proven unpopular with wine professionals: They’re difficult to extract from the bottle and have the unfortunate distinction these days as being less than environmentally-friendly.
Screw tops, or Stelvin enclosures, are The Next Great Hope: They’re easy to use, they keep young wines fabulously fresh, and they can be recycled. The only question, really, is how older wines will evolve under Stelvin seal as they spend decades in the cellar. But for younger wines, at least, they’re a very good solution: Do not shy away from them, or assume that the juice underneath their seal is cheap.