Valves for wine bottles

Almost every wine lover will have had the disappointing cork experience: a wine smells musty, mouldy, like wet cardboard and is drying in the aftertaste. Usually TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) is responsible for this, a conversion of chlorine-containing substances brought about by fungi. In the past, these chlorine-containing substances were used to bleach cork and as components of pesticides for cork oak cultivation. For bleaching, chlorine is now out of the question, but residues of chlorine can still be found in the soils of cork oak plantations. In addition, a cork only lasts about 25 years, depending of course on storage conditions. Big chateaus like Lafite Rothschild re-cork their bottles after 30 to 40 years. For a quality cork, you easily pay a euro each. Finally, in recent decades, cork has been associated with premature oxidation of wines destined for storage. Harvesting the cork oak too early in the 1990s is frequently associated with this. Reasons enough for many producers to look for an alternative stopper.

Synthetic

This type of plastic valves did not last long. It was soon discovered that after several years of bottle aging, aromas from the material used leaked into the wine. Producer Nomacorc had to look for an alternative and found it in a new range of valves based on sugarcane.

Screw cap

Although the cradle of the screw cap was in Switzerland, the screw cap has become a huge success especially in Australia and New Zealand under the name Stelvin. Here, more than 70 per cent of bottles are fitted with a screw cap. Experiments have shown that white wines with screw caps are much fresher after a few years than when they were closed with a cork. You also see more and more screw caps in the cheaper segment in Burgundy. Michel Laroche, the previous owner of Domaine Laroche in Chablis, was a great advocate of the screw cap for many years. There were even rumours that he was paid for this. However, they have since backtracked at Laroche. Application of the screw cap to red wines initially gave reduction problems, but since the quality of the heart of the screw cap has improved considerably, that problem seems to have been tackled. However, the screw cap still requires a hefty initial investment.

Read the whole article in WINELIFE Magazine #66. You can order here

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