Wine Information

Wine with plastic/metal cork!?

I used to 'stay clear' of wines with eather plastic 'cork' or screw 'cork' because I was told it was very bad wine... but there were a program on TV not long ago, that said that some really good wine yards (new world wines) have started to use them, and that it has nothing to do with qualty. They said that even with the plastic cork, the wine could breath... Is this true?

Public Comments

1. I heard the same thing as you. Artificial corks and screw tops have gotten a bad rap by the wine purists.
2. Yes, Some of the top winemakers in the world are now using screw caps, as with the old way, quite a few bottles went bad or corked because the cork decayed.Some of my favourite New Zealand wines ahave a screw cap. Years ago it used to be only the worst, cheapest wines that used them due to the cost savings vs cork, but now winemakers are realising the benefits, which outweigh the cost. Go for it and try some wines at about £6-7 with a screwcap, you wont be dissapionted by them!
3. Purely snobbery. It's been shown in repeated double-blind tests that even the self-congratulatory wine buffs really, really struggle to tell the difference.
4. You don't really want your wine to breath. That's why you have on top of the cork a metallic foil to really seal it (or plastic or sometimes wax) But it's true that more and more the wine maker (and not the worst) are using synthetic material instead of cork. I think this is down to several reasons. Cost - the cost of good quality cork is increasing Quality - it is more and more difficult to find good quality cork which will always be good. Risk - there is much less risk to spoil the wine with a plastic cork than a real one Customer are getting used to it and it is becoming more acceptable, and less synonymous with cheap plonk.
5. Even some of the better vineyards are now using screwtop bottles. Modern plastic corks have been developed a lot recently and are more predictable than natural cork plus a lot more wine is being drank without being matured. Some are even available in plastic bottles! I would definitely not avoid a wine, just because it has a screwtop, in fact I am drinking a particularly nice Cab/Shiraz from a bottle with a screwtop as I type.
6. Most cork comes from a type of Oak tree grown in Portugal. As trees only grow slowly, production of cork couldn't keep up with the boom in wine consumption at the end of the 20th century, so younger cork was used. This in turn led to an increase in 'corked' wines. (Wine spoiled by a reaction with the cork). The search for a suitable alternative, which wasn't a new search, accelerated greatly at that time. At the same time, filtering technology improved at an amazing rate. This meant that impurities in wine decreased to almost nil. These three factors together have led to the current situation where artificial stoppers are more and more accepted. Most wine writers now acknowledge that the alternatives are just as good, if not better. The days when the cork was almost as important as the wine are over. I say "I'll drink to that!"
7. Actually, that’s not necessarily a bad thing anymore. The majority of natural cork wine corks come from Spain. Over the last few years, the Spanish cork tree (cork is a bark) have been hit hard by various diseases. Diseased cork WILL and HAVE ruined entire batches of wine, a loss a small winery can not financially take. To combat this, many wineries have switch to synthetic “plastic” corks. These corks don’t come without their own issues. Synthetic corks don’t always seal as well as natural cork, air gets in, oxidizes the wine and it goes bad. Lately, the safest disease/air leak free seal has bees the metal screw top. The old rule of thumb about synthetic corks and screw tops is no longer valid. It depends on the winery and what they want to or can afford to chance.
8. Having worked in the wine business I came across probably 1 bottle in 20 that had a problem due to a faulty natural cork. However, I have never had a faulty bottle with a plastic cork or a screwcap so in my opinion they are definately the future of wine.