...a bottle of wine and thou

Why I hate natural corks

I was cheerfully prepared to review Chrisman Mill's award winning Sweet Jessamine Rose. I've enjoyed this sweet after-dinner wine before and remember it being well worth buying more than once. I can't tell you anything more about it, though, because this time my brand new bottle was tainted with the evil of cork taint.

In case you've ever wondered, the whole purpose of smelling the cork is to make sure it hasn't rotted. If you nod and tell the sommelier to pour, you're accepting responsibility even if the wine is moldier than a bachelor's carpet. On a white or blush wine, you can actually see the rot - faint discolored patches of a blue-green that look disturbingly like mold. If your cork has rot, just pour the bottle down the sink, no matter what you paid for it. You can't even use it for vinegar.

I've read anywhere between 5 - 15% of all wines bottled with natural corks will rot by the time they reach the consumer. I'd say I lose about one out of every ten bottles to it.

As far as I am concerned, there is absolutely no reason for this. Artificial corks are superior in every measurable way except tradition. C'mon folks - tradition isn't perfect. The Romans lined their wine amphorae with tar - no kidding, tar! - in order to preserve wine for shipping. They also said it improved the flavor. And hey, it was traditional. As for later generations, it made complete sense for Europeans to stop bottles with a soft wood. It really was the best thing available, and was a heck of an improvement over tar. Time marches on. The industrial revolution brought about a whole new set of preservative technologies, ones where you don't have to lose any bottles to cork rot. I'll take consistently good wine over poisonous tradition any day.

This is clearly catching on among some producers. I'd say about a quarter of the wines I drink now have artificial corks. A number of Australian producers have gone one further, introducing Stelvin screw caps on $100 bottles of wine. These new screw tops are apparently much more expensive than traditional corks, but are also airtight and guarantee you'll get a quality bottle every time. Considering people are unlikely to buy a second $100 bottle of wine if the first is awful, they're willing to risk a few raised eyebrows in exchange for consistent quality.

As a consumer, I'd love to see all producers move to artificial closures. Until then, I'll keep noting who uses natural cork and how many of those bottles I have to pour down the drain. I see no reason to pay an extra 10% premium on the cost of wine lost to unnecessary cork rot.

posted by Chris Rachael Oseland at 6:11 PM