Wired Science

Good for "Wired", and good for Beiser for explaining the environmental and employment impacts of the switch from cork. But for anyone who has walked in the cork forests, losing them would be losing some of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Please keep the cork and stuff the screw!

I find the changes in the green movement very interesting (not a critical statement as I am in favor of it). I remember as little as 10 years ago when people were saying we should stop using cork because it was endangering the cork forests, and that the synthetic cork and screw caps were the green alternative. This article certainly makes sense though, so maybe that misconception from before was simply lies spread by the synthetic cork and screw cap companies. Damn you misinformation!

It would be interesting to know how long it takes the plastic "corks" (I call them little wine bullets) to biodegrade.

I'm with Nevin. Where's the analysis of synthetic corks as "greener" than natural cork? Now I'm doubting myself ... did I really think that wino's would endanger the cork forest? Did I think that vintners caused deforestation in their unending thirst for cork? What happened to this? I demand a followup article!

I'm with Nevin and WaorrelidPeace, I too remember articles
saying that cork was on the endangered list and now you say it's recycleable. That is not what I remember the articles reporting. Could you please look into this as I am now thoroughly confused. What do I believe, cork or screwcaps.

This recent analysis of carbon footprint of Screwcaps was commissioned by a cork company - I saw it written up in a wine trade publication. Screwcaps are made from Aluminum and Tin, and there is no great difficulty in recycling them, and I suppose that they will naturally corrode after time in the environment. Cork is a sustainably harvested natural product, as it does not kill the trees when the bark is stripped off them every 11 years or so - but a monoculture of cork trees is hardly to be considered an endangered, essential habitat either. And there are plenty of other uses for cork from flooring to Birkenstocks - it just happens that wine corks are the highest value market for corks, from $0.45 to $1.00 each, and going higher each year for top grade. The cork industry is struggling as more wine afficianados come to realize that using natural cork is an unacceptable risk to their wine quality, and more people are embracing the use of better, more reliable alternatives. Vive la Screwcap!

The writer needs to check a few of his accusations.
While I have no use for plastic anywhere in our world, metal is biodegradable-it rusts and dissolves. Also my hunch would be it takes less energy to produce screw tops than either cork or plastic. Much less the reduced energy and time needed to open the bottle.

I agree with Nathan and SantaBarbaraBud. A screwcap is better than a cork for wine bottle closure. The screwcap is likely to assure better wine quality than corks because of inconsistencies in cork quality. Corks can also sometime crumble when removing from the bottle, especially for older vintages.
Concerning the "greeness" of corks, I have wondered about that for years. As a result, I have two grocery bags full of used wine corks in my garage. Can they be composted?
Plastic closures have no qualities as a substitute for cork or screw tops. They are nearly impossible to remove from the bottle and they cannot be easily degraded or recycled.

The type of wine bottle closure is more oriented to the type of wine in the bottle. A crisp clean wine keeps better in a bottle with a screw cap while a tanninic red would be better in a wine bottle with a cork closure. George Taber in his book, TO CORK OR NOT TO CORK, provides a good example of the greed of man in which the Portuguese & Spanish messed up their cork closure industry because of MONEY. I would much prefer seeing cork on floor in commercial buildings and in homes than on a crisp Sauvignon Blanc out of New Zealand. Give me my screw closure on a crisp white wine any day and cork or synthetic closure on the reds. Ulitmately, it is the vintner who decides to cork or to screw based on what he is trying to sell in his bottles of vino, crispness vs. balanced mellowness in a juicy red wine.

I expected to find Alcoa's new Vino-Lok glass wine stopper listed as an alternative. The glass certainly is recyclable. There is a minimal amount of a rubber-like compound on the glass stopper that effectively seals the bottle.

Dump cork in bottles, use the cork for flooring!

To cork or not to cork...that is the question. Whether it is nobler to pull than screw..aye, there's the rub!!
Ultimately, it is the vintner who decides, of course.

Can you imagine such a simple issue serving up the debate about the relative economic, social, and environmental impact of competing technologies? I wonder if this suggests anything about the certainty of global warming and the most appropriate reaction to it as a possibility?

There are, imo, two very simple issues in this debate: the first is "quality", the second is "available information."

The wine industry's generally accepted percentage of tainted bottles is 3%-10% (I've never heard of 15% in my life!!) Why would any caring producer put a closure on his bottle knowing that he is condemning roughly any portion of that bottling to a tainted death? We, as consumers, should applaud and celebrate the wine industry's search for closures that allow them to offer a quality product in every bottle they make. With an organic substance like cork, there is always the potential for variation. In a bottling of wine, you'd like everyone to enjoy the bottling as it was meant to be.

I am a wine producer who is appalled at the thought of even one of you trying a bottle of my wine that has the "wet cardboard, musty basement or wet dog" smell that a TCA tainted cork puts into the bottle.

Let's talk about information! There are more wineries today than ever before. There is a higher need for real cork than ever before. Even with the synthetic and alternative closure industry looming on different styles and offerings every year, there will still be more traditionalists than not (my opinion of course.)

So - no worries Jane - your "walks in the cork forests" aren't going anywhere!

A couple of comments: First, high end wine has distinctions with respect to cork. Many high end California Cabernet Sauvignons do not age particularly well under any circumstances. The question of their age-worthiness relates more to how long the wine will last without going bad, mostly from contact with oxygen. Many high-end Bordeaux wines made predominantly from the same grape evolve into more complex and beautiful experiences with age, and minute quantities of oxygen are required for this. Therefore, California Cabs are probably better off with screw-caps while Bordeaux would probably benefit more from corks, albeit with a few bottles ruined.

People like to use the word “tradition” as a reason for preserving the cork ritual. This is true, but a more important aspect, which is largely unrecognized because it resides in the unconscious psyche, is the psychological affinity with cork. The cork is symbolically associated with the symbolic, even religious, significance of wine. The Tree of Life has bark; and its roots go deep into the soil to bring chthonic elements there in touch with the spirits of the sky through the branches and leaves. The Wine God Dionysus carried a staff with a pine cone atop, somewhat analogous to a cork on a bottle, etc. While we don’t consciously think of these kinds of archetypal connections, our unconscious mind creates a certain numinosity around wine from them, which is largely lost in screw-capping.

I'm with Chris. Not only does corked wine reflect badly on a producer but it's bad for the environment. Roughly 1 in 20 bottles is ruined by bad cork thus wasting 5% of the energy, material and human input used to make wine with cork closures.

Figuring out what is truly green is an evolving issue. We haven't developed a good, standard method of assessing this. The article talks about the "considerable energy" required for synthetic corks or screw caps, but doesn't really give us any hard data. I wonder if the author even figured out how much energy cork production uses?
Then, as others above so ably pointed out, there is the question of off-flavors imparted by corks. Even though the cork industry has made great improvements in delivering a clean product, the honest ones will still admit they can't get pontentially noticeable levels of TCA below 2 or 3%. So we're going to ask the wine industry to put out a product that is 2-3% defective so that they can be "green"? How would you like to be the consumer who gets stuck with those defective bottles? Even if you can manage to get your money back or the product replaced, do you really want to purchase a product knowing that some unlucky soul will be the one who has to spend his or her time making a trip back to the wine shop--and maybe this time it will be you?

As a person who enjoys a bottle of wine from time to time with my wife I like the screw cap... LOTS easier than a cork... don't have to wonder if I'm screwing in too far and going to break it and end up with cork bits in the wine (yuck). And a screw top is much more secure for putting back in the fridge than re-applying a cork or a leaky stopper. Screw tops are much more practical... and I'll let the environmentalists fight out which is more eco-friendly...

That was a very interesting article. But why couldn't we make a bottle with half cork and half plastic. Wouldn't that solve some of our problems atleast. I'm 14 I don't know much but couldn't you heat them both up and make a new substance.

Screw tops do not allow any oxygen to enter the bottle, therefore the wines must be made differently with much more oxygen in the bottle or else they will become reductive. (Rotten eggs, mercaptans, etc.)
Plastic corks do not seal well and have a limited shelf life. Don't plan on a five-year-old Cabernet to be good under plastic.
Cork is a marvelous natural material. It is renewable, recyclable and seals perfectly. Cork taint is way down with the research done by the Cork Quality Council.
The problem is really the bottle. Most wines should be sold in aseptic packages (Tetrapak)like in Europe or in Bag-in-box (Casks in New Zealand.) Only wines destined to be aged and served for special occasions should be bottled. Wine would be much cheaper which is important for a food that should be consumed daily.

I have a feeling these trees would not just die out or magically be burned down in a forest fire. Actually they would be allowed to thrive and continue to contribute to the earth instead of being chopped down to make corks. You can make screw caps from recycled metal. Aluminum is the number one recyclable material out there.

Josh, the trees are never "chopped down". Its the bark that is harvested every ten years or so. Thats the magic of cork.

All of this from PBS that I follow in Philadelphia through NPR who within the last year or so had the reading of an article about how using genuine GENUINE cork is hazardous to the original plant. The actual cork itself comes traditionally from a specific plant, not just from any random tree. It's all crap. Go with fully recyclable all around. Skip the glass, go for tetra and put it all in the bin to make school books.

what was that whole region like before people started cultivating cork oaks and grazing to keep the fire load low?