At a recent Naked Winery board meeting we gladly enjoyed the crisp crinkling sound of the black screw top coming off our freshly bottled Escort Pinot Gris. Why you might ask?

At a recent Naked Winery board meeting we gladly enjoyed the crisp crinkling sound of the black screw top coming off our freshly bottled Escort Pinot Gris. Why you might ask? Well as hard to believe as this may be, we almost never can find a functioning cork screw at our home. Also, as this wine is fantastic (IMHO) we didn’t want to take a chance on having to waste a single bottle due to 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA). Corked wine, as it is better known, smells like wet sheep dog or a dark damp moldy basement floor mat or, well, you get the idea. It doesn’t smell like something you would like to drink or have at the dinner table with you.

Cork taint is caused by the interaction of bugs (micro fungi) and environmental chlorine. It seems that the once popular wonder bug-killing cleaning agent wasn’t always the wine makers’ friend. Even when Hydrogen Peroxide or other cleaning agents were used we found that the cork oak (Quercus Suber) had been naturally putting Chloroanisoles in the bark all along. Yes, corks come from the bark of real trees. So, in order to not lose about 4-8% of wine production to the little buggers many wine producers have moved to cork alternatives, like the screw tops and synthetic corks.

The synthetic corks are made of high-grade thermoplastic elastomer that allows them to compress and expand just like oak bark corks. They maintain the look, feel and most importantly the romantic pop of the natural cork. This type of cork can be found in bottles of our Oregon Foreplay and Vixen Syrah. They will never break in half or crumble when being removed from the bottle. So, while you will still need a cork screw to open the bottle, you will rarely if ever have wine with TCA. Yes, TCA can come from other sources, like the oak barrel itself, but it is very rare.

Don’t worry just yet about the death of natural cork though, as the industry has responded with methods to virtually eliminate TCA. The rosa system is a good example of a cork cleaning process to reduce TCA and sobate diamond process extracts the bad compounds from the cork with supercritical CO2. Cork advocates also argue that the small amount of oxygen allowed into the bottle by natural cork aids in the bottle development of red wines. In fact at Naked Winery we use the natural cork closure on our big reds like the Missionary Cabernet Sauvignon.

So what’s the bottom line best closure? Technically the screw top is hard to beat as it doesn’t have the TCA issue and does not let air into the bottle until you decide to open it up and imbibe. Add to this the fact that blind taste tests conducted on identical wines aged with corks versus screw caps found the tasters choosing the screw cap wine most of the time. Does this mean we’ll all be using screws tops in the future? No. Absolutely not as in real life with are not blinded during the experience of wine. Many people will continue prefer the feel and excitement (maybe nervousness as well) that occurs when we pop the cork!