Screw caps: not just for jug wine anymore

Customers who buy fine wines from the PlumpJack vineyards in California must abandon any qualms they have about twisting the tops off their wine bottles.

PlumpJack’s 1997 cabernet reserve sells only in two-bottle sets--one bottle sealed with a traditional cork, the other with a screw cap, like the kind many people still associate with the swill they drank in college. But this cabernet is no rotgut: The two-bottle set sells for about $320.

“Our hope is that people will open the two bottles together and see that they are the same,” said John Conover, the winery’s general manager. Conover is one of a growing number of vintners who are making progress in persuading wine drinkers to abandon the idea that a good wine can be sealed only one way--with a cork.

Wines with aluminum caps are becoming more common on store shelves. About once a week a small or mid-size American winery signs on with Stelvin, the French company that produces the most popular brand of screw cap, according to Frederic Catteau, a manager for the company’s American distributor.

Bonny Doon Vineyards in California, which bottles a wide variety of wines including Rieslings and Syrahs, will switch all of its wines to screw caps this year. Villa Maria, New Zealand’s third-largest wine producer, now uses screw caps on all of its bottles.

Only about 1 percent of American-made wines were sealed with screw caps in 2003, according to a survey of 284 wineries conducted by Wine Business Monthly, a trade magazine. By 2005, 6 percent of those wines had screw caps. One reason for the increase is convenience. Screw cap bottles are easier to open and reseal than corked bottles, and they don’t have to be stored on their sides.

Even more important, however, is taste. Tradition aside, screw caps may actually be more effective than corks at protecting what’s inside the bottle, and certainly no less, vintners say. Conover challenges drinkers to discern a difference in the way his cabernets have aged in their two bottles, one sealed with a cork, one not.

In a recent taste test of 36 New Zealand sauvignon blancs, the winning wine--selected by five members of the six-person panel of wine experts--was the only one from a screw cap bottle. “It just tasted fresher and livelier,” said Scott Tyree, the sommelier at the French restaurant Tru in Chicago.

Tyree has such confidence in the screw cap wines on his list that he’s not above trying a little shock therapy. He does not warn diners when they order a wine that comes in a screw cap bottle. “I prefer to spring it on them at the table,” Tyree said. “It makes a better impact, especially at a restaurant like this, where people expect good quality wines. I like to just crack it open in front of them.”

Though some customers are initially skeptical, Tyree said, they are usually happy when they taste the wines. At least no one has sent back a bottle in a huff.

However, some traditionalists are loath to give up the ceremony that surrounds the uncorking of a bottle. Ed Pignone, 57, the executive director of the Old North Church in Boston, says he can’t imagine a fancy dinner without the satisfying “pop” of the cork being yanked from the bottle. “There’s a certain amount of totem and ritual about drinking wine,” Pignone said. “And part of that ritual is, I believe, the uncorking.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the screw cap has found its greatest acceptance among New World wine producers, as opposed to vintners in Europe. In New Zealand about 70 percent of all wines are now sealed with screw caps, according to Wine Business Monthly. The country where the screw cap was born, and whose name is nearly synonymous with wine in the mind of many Americans, is one where the screw cap has met the most resistance.

“France is very conservative,” said Catteau, the general manager of Alcan Packaging Capsules of California, Selvin's American distributor. “It will take time.”

Advocates say screw caps prevent wines from being tainted by TCA, or trichloroanisole, a contaminant that affects 5 to 15 percent of all natural corks. The resulting “cork taint” gives wines a musty taste. One reason Conover is pushing so hard for the screw top conversion is that his company does not simply own a vineyard. PlumpJack also runs a number of restaurants and hotels in northern California, and Conover has grown tired of seeing “corked” bottles returned because of spoilage. “No other industry would allow that rate of failure in product packaging,” he said.

But cork defenders say screw caps prevent bottled wines’ exposure to oxygen, and stop the aging process that improves flavor. In response Stelvin has designed special liners for the insides of its caps to allow varied amounts of exposure. The caps "are not just like a top for a jam jar,” Catteau said. “The liner allows breathability and an exchange of oxygen.”

John Speaks, a 54-year-old credit officer in New York, got used to drinking wines from screw top bottles when he lived in Australia. He recently bought a bottle of Australian Shiraz in Manhattan to bring to a friend’s home for dinner. “I’m sure I’ll get a joke about it,” he said of the screw cap. “But he’ll know it’s a good bottle, and we’ll enjoy it.”

But even some wine drinkers who have accepted screw caps are nostalgic for corks.

“In terms of quality, I think a screw cap is actually better because I’ve never had a bottle of screw cap that has come out bad,” said Jonathan Marvin, 32, a scientist who lives in New York. “But it definitely takes away from the tradition and romance of drinking wine.”

E-mail: kdb2108@columbia.edu