A new twist for our wine bottles

Radical change is coming in the wine industry. ANDREW LAXON reports on the approaching screw-cap revolution.

For the traditionalist, it is all too much. Wine bottles with screw-cap tops instead of corks? Why not go the whole way and introduce fine dining at McDonald's?

But if a growing number of New Zealand winemakers and commentators are right, stick-in-the-mud producers and consumers could soon be scrambling to catch up with one of the biggest changes to hit the industry.

Yesterday, 25 wineries launched a publicity campaign for screw-capped wine in Marlborough.

Their sales pitch was improved by news that Villa Maria, which makes about 10 per cent of the New Zealand bottled wine sold in this country, plans to switch from next year.

Our biggest winemaker, Montana, remains non-committal but Herald wine writer Joelle Thompson is boldly predicting that within five years at least half of our locally produced whites will come in handy screw-top bottles.

For the confused and the downright sceptical, this is how the experts think the change is likely to occur.

Wine bottles without corks just sounds wrong. Haven't the two always gone together?

Funnily enough, no. Corks were sometimes used by the Greeks and Romans, but were not widely adopted until the 17th century. The corkscrew, originally used for drawing bullets from firearms, makes its first appearance in print as "a steel worm used for the drawing of corks out of bottles" in 1681. By the 19th century, corks had replaced glass plugs (sometimes known as stopples) which had an unfortunate tendency to shatter the bottle on opening.

Cork comes from the bark of cork trees, which live for 170 years. They can be stripped every nine years and the cork bark will grow back again. Cork trees grow all over the western Mediterranean but mostly in Portugal, which is where New Zealand gets its supplies.

As Tom Canavan, author of the The Good Web Guide to Wine, puts it: "The qualities of cork bark are uniquely suitable for stoppering a bottle of wine: its cellular structure makes it elastic (so it keeps on forming a powerful seal over many years), impermeable to gas and liquids (so it keeps the wine in and the air out) and inert (so it doesn't taint the wine)."

So why get rid of it?

Corks can often be affected by a chemical called trichloranisole (TCA), which has a musty, mushroomy smell and taste. There are various theories about why this happens - either the raw cork is badly stored before processing or TCA creeps in when the cork is washed in a chlorine solution. Either way, when the tainted cork contacts the wine it goes off, sometimes marginally, sometimes completely. This is known as "corked" wine.

How often does this happen?

There is heated debate over the figures in the wine industry, both locally and overseas. In New Zealand Villa Maria managing director George Fistonich estimates 5 per cent of wine is obviously tainted and another 5 per cent can be spotted easily by an expert. He says a further percentage is more subtly affected. Montana's chief winemaker, Jeff Clarke, disagrees and puts the problem as low as 1 or 2 per cent.

Thompson thinks the exact level of cork taint is a diversion. She says the worldwide figure is about 10 per cent - "that's a lot for any industry" - so even if some wineries have it as low as 1 per cent, this is still unacceptable.

"If it was chocolate biscuits or extra virgin olive oil or premium whisky and between 1 and 20 per cent of it was stuffed because of part of the packaging, then you would try to fix the packaging."

Thompson says ordinary wine drinkers find it hard to deal with corked wine because they are usually not confident enough to recognise it and send the wine back.

Can the problem be fixed?

Under pressure from winemakers around the world, the cork industry is trying a range of techniques, including scrapping chlorine washing. Improvements have been reported, but many wine producers have given up and are looking for alternatives to cork.

What else is there?

Natural cork can be replaced with plastic. The bottle looks the same and the same corkscrew process is used to remove the stopper. This also helps in the classic restaurant ritual whereby the wine waiter ceremonially removes the cork to prove to customers that their choice is not a refilled bottle.

In Britain, Marks & Spencer has well over half its range in plastic corks, believing this will cut down on consumer complaints and returned faulty bottles.

But plastic corks can play havoc with corkscrews. More importantly, some winemakers believe they fail the test of time.

Mr Fistonich says his company has found the plastic taste gets into the wine after about nine months.

Another alternative is beer bottle caps, known as crown caps. These are already used in the making of champagne and could be the answer for sparkling wines, which cannot be sealed with screw caps because too much gas pressure would build up inside the bottle.

But increasingly the favoured solution is screw caps. Thompson and fellow wine critic Bob Campbell - who will promote New Zealand screw-capped wines in London, New York and San Francisco - rave about the fresher taste and better ageing qualities of screw-capped wines, compared with the same wines under cork.

Campbell says he's sampled some "amazing" 20-year-old screw-capped Australian rieslings. This compares with huge variation from gold medal to no award for the same wine under cork. The difference occurs because air gets into cork over time.

Mr Fistonich says his company will start producing "a fairly large proportion" of its wine in screw caps from next year.

He is still not sure whether a large proportion could mean 30 per cent or, say, 60 per cent, but he is convinced screw-capped wine is the way of the future. "It's a very, very good closure. It's superior to cork."

So why isn't everyone doing it?

In a word, image. As Mr Fistonich puts it: "There is a strong public perception that cork is better, it's got some tradition and romance. However, if tradition and romance mean you're getting an inferior product, we have to discard tradition and romance and go for quality."

Villa Maria has ordered a $250,000 machine to make the change to screw caps but he expects it will have to spend more on marketing and advertising to convince the public to accept the change.

"Over the centuries, cork has built up a romantic image, but it's really a bit of tree. In five or 10 years' time we'll look back and remember the days when we used the trunk of a tree to shove into a bottle.

"The reality is we have to listen to consumers and some consumers just love popping that cork. So we've just go to see how it goes and obviously there'll be some adverse reaction."

How many winemakers are using this method?

Names at yesterday's launch included Palliser Estate, Lawsons Dry Hills, Jackson Estate, Forrest Estate, Kim Crawford, Wairau River, Kumeu River Wines and Selaks Drylands Estate.

Among them the winemakers make up less than 1 per cent of this country's production but they produce some top-quality wines.

Michael Brakovich, Master of Wine and winemaker for Kumeu River, is moving to bottle all his wines, including premium label Kumeu River and Mate's Vineyard chardonnays, in the new tops.

Only exports to the United States will be under cork - partly because Americans associate screw caps with cheap jugged wines, the equivalent of our cask wines.

Forrest, Lawsons and Neudorf plan to screw-cap all their wines.

So far Montana - the giant of the New Zealand wine industry with 45 per cent of production and 57 per cent of local sales since it swallowed its rival Corbans - is watching carefully from the sidelines.

Communications manager Zirk van den Berg says the main reason is the company does not believe claims that about 10 per cent of wine is affected by cork taint.

A sceptical Campbell says many winemakers are hanging back only to see how the market reacts.

"My question to them is ... if they honestly believe screw caps are better, how come they shortchange their customers like that?

"The reason they're hanging back has nothing to do with any deficiency in screw caps.

"They're all to do with the market reaction, that's the big issue."

Overseas, one of Italy's top winemakers, Elio Altare, has taken his former cork producer to court because 80 per cent of his 1997 Barolo red wines, which sell for more than $100 a bottle in New Zealand, were ruined.

But Clare Valley Rieslings in Australia have taken the lead in changing to screw caps.

Some commentators believe the trend will not start to take off until one of the big American producers gets involved.

Which wines does it work for?

All wines, except sparkling because the build-up of gas inside the bottle could blow the cap off.

But the changes are most likely to be seen in aromatic, fruity white wines, such as rieslings, gewurztraminers and sauvignon blancs, which are most affected by cork taint.

So will corks disappear altogether?

The Good Web Guide to Wine's Tom Canavan doesn't think so. He concludes there will always be something satisfying about drawing a real cork from a fine bottle.

Thompson is more brutal.

"The issue is quality. If it's a toss-up between the romance of popping a cork or the convenience of opening a screw-cap wine and coming up with better quality wine, then the choice is obvious.

"One of the best things about screw caps is it takes away that mystique for the consumer about what on earth corked wine is in the first place.

"A lot of people don't understand what corked wine is. Once we get rid of corks we don't have that issue any more."

Wineries lead the charge

New Zealand winemakers planning to use screw caps:

Allan Scott, Cairnbrae Vineyards, Clifford Bay Estate, Craggy Range, Firstland Vineyards, Forrest Estate, Foxes Island, Framingham Wine, Gibbston Valley, Giesen Wine Estate, Goldwater Estate, Jackson Estate, Kim Crawford, Kumeu River, Lawson's Dry Hills, Neudorf, Palliser Estate, Riverby Estate, Seresin Estate, Te Whare Ra, Trinity Hill, Villa Maria, Wairau River, Wither Hills, Woollaston Estates.