Score One for the Cork Producers

Posted by Tom Wark on Jan 16, 2007

It appears that word is out that 2 in 100 (2%) of screwcap-closed wines are infected with the smell of sulfur…or "likened by some to burning rubber, spent matches or even a schoolboy stink bomb."

This is still a rate of bottle taint that is at least half that of cork-closed bottles.

The news accounts that covered this discovery make note that the smell blows off. However, many folks are advising to stay away from RED wines closed with screwcaps that you plan to lay down, while going on ahead and not worrying about the whites that are meant for immediate drinking.

Score this one for the cork manufacturers who have been in an underground battle against the alternative closure manufacturers for some time.

But I have to pass on the interesting thing I found in one article on this subject:

"Geoffrey Taylor, a wine chemist who tests 14,000 capped bottles a year,
admitted that he had found sulphidisation. “Screwcap problems are
around 2 per cent for Australia and double that elsewhere."

Now, I don’t know Mr. Taylor. He may own a Lab at which wineries have their wines tested. But 14,000 screwcapped wines comes to about 1.5 bottles opened per hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Again, maybe he owns a lab or tests bottles opened at wine competitions. But that’s a heck of a lot of screwcapped bottles of wine.