Picture for me, that you’ve just gotten home from a rough day of work. Deadlines are creeping up, your boss is on your back about making your quotas for the month and all you really want is a really great drink. So, you curl up on the couch with your favorite feel good movie, maybe something with Johnny Depp, and decide to open up a great bottle of cabernet, let’s say the ’04 Andrew Geoffrey (which retails at $79.00). You uncork the bottle, pour yourself a generous glass and settle in. You take a moment to revel in the fact that your day has finally come to a close before you finally take that first delicious sip. But instead of the dried raisins and cocoa you expected to have coating your palate you get a mouthful of wine resembling the taste of mold and cardboard. It’s corked! There goes your pick me up.
We’ve all had those moments when the wine we’re expecting to enjoy has been first visited by that nasty little chemical 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA) and turned foul! So, it’s a wonder that while screw caps, also known as “stelvin enclosures”, are becoming a convenient alternative that so many people are still resisting! Why not take advantage of the opportunity to avoid such an awful experience? Perhaps, because while a screw cap does keep wine from contamination more effectively it also prevents any oxygen from getting in, causing a phenomenon called “reduction,” which can give the wine a sulfur-like smell. In some cases, experts say, this can be reversed by simple decanting.
But it’s more than just the reduction that’s stopping us. Deep down we’re all still a bit attached to the cork. There’s a romanticism about it. Screw caps are associated with cheap, poor quality products like Mad Dog 22 and King Cobra, not a nice bottle of cabernet! Who can really imagine wine without a cork?! But ready or not, some wineries are leaning heavily in that direction. Nearly all of Australia and New Zealand (where the revolution began) have already adapted to it, as well as a few notable wineries in the United States. The Hentley Farm Zinfandel, for example, full of dark, port-like and almost savory fruit is closed off with a screw cap. Even Maison Jean-Claude, a Grand Cru vineyard in Chambertin, Burgundy which sells for more than $200 a bottle, rolled out half its ’05 vintage with screw caps! It’s not just Boone’s Farm anymore.
If you ask me, it’s about time to just suck it up and go with the flow. The flow of wine, that is. A screw cap does not necessarily indicate cheap wine anymore. So, savor the cork while you still can and don’t let that little stelvin enclosure scare you so much!
Great Screw Caps to try:
-Dr. L Riesling from Dr. Loosen ($12-15)
-Gemtree Citrine Chardonnay ($18-22)
-Omaka Springs Sauvignon Blanc ($10-15)
-Cirillo 1850 Old Vine Grenache ($65-70)
-Red Head Studio’s Barrel Monkey Shiraz ($20-25)
