By Chris Hoel
Illustration by Danny Elchert
It is truly amazing that the wine industry continues to plug its product—literally—with a porous, bacteria-prone piece of tree bark. It’s estimated that 5 to 7 percent of wines suffer from “cork taint,” the common name for the rogue fungus that can live silently inside a cork, only to later contaminate a wine. “Corked” wine has prompted many wineries worldwide to take action and find alternative closures to alleviate the problem.
Plastic, synthetic and composite corks have their devotees, but it’s that lowly closure from the other side of the tracks, the one we remember from our Boone’s Farm youth—the screw cap—that has taken the lead, mainly due to its near–0 percent failure rate. Over time it has been refined and even picked up a pedigreed name—the Stelvin closure—but it’s still an unromantic, ill-sounding screw cap.
The tide turned in 2001, when forward-thinking wineries in New Zealand formed the “Wine Seal Initiative” and placed many of their best wines under the Stelvin. Not surprisingly, New Zealand and Australia still lead the popularity contest, but what is surprising to me is that the Old World countries—and even France—are now embracing such an “uncivilized” New World idea.
Missouri wineries have long believed in the screw cap. St. James Winery has 15 of its current release wines under Stelvin, Stone Hill has eight, and Mt. Pleasant has five, including the Taster’s Guild International Double Gold Winner (its highest award), the 2005 Mount Pleasant Claret.
Sommeliers, myself included, love screw caps because it just pains us to uncork a bad wine. Even though the average “cellaring” time in the United States is only about 6 hours, it makes no sense for you to do so either. Finally, it looks like more wine drinkers are catching on—a recent Nielsen survey showed that national sales of screw-cap wines were up 25 percent in 2006.
I know from personal visits that several higher-end California wineries have been bottling their personal stock under Stelvins—some for 30 years! If these big boys are believers, you should be too.
