Why do wines have corks

The leftover scrap cork can then be recycled into other products. Because glass bottles inherently pass no oxygen, a cork is an essential component that develops the aging aroma and flavor that consumers enjoy in their favorite wines and spirits.

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With reds it is a little less clear cut — in theory. Besides, what are the chances you will be selecting an age worthy bottle in your supermarket on your way home from work this Friday? And do you live in the kind of home that comes with a wine cellar in the dungeon? The final, and arguably most important reason why you should not dismiss screw caps out of hand, is this. Although cork is rot resistant, hygiene standards require that all corks be sanitised with chlorine.

This causes a substance to form on the cork called trichloroanisole. Wine can react to it and develop a musty, unpleasant smell. This can happen to wine whether it is expensive or inexpensive and you will only find out about it after you have uncorked the bottle. If you are purchasing a wine with limited aging potential, is it worth the risk? So, instead of enslaving entire forests of cork oaks for hundreds of years, why not opt for the convenience and affordability of a wine with a screw cap?

For example, recently, I came across this bottle of Casillero del Diablo Carmenere. I absolutely love it. It is delightfully fruity, spicy like a Shiraz and smooth like Merlot. It is absolutely the best wine to watch old episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix. And if I had been prejudiced about screw caps I would have missed out on the experience of tasting it! Which reminds me, we have a video comparing two bottles of 10 Euro Prosecco to see which one best pairs with Calamari.

I will leave a link in the Description below so you can find out which wine won. And if you want to know more about pairing food and wine, head over to our blog, WineScribble. And now for my bonus bit of trivia: is it true that all the cork in the world comes from Portugal?

Well, the answer is…no. There was a chemical that nobody understood but that fouled certain bodies. It tainted certain wines. But certainly, there have been a number of bottles that are tainted, which is a disaster. Knowledge Wharton: Is there any way to know which bottles of wine are going to be affected? There are two types of cork that are tainted. They are very similar, but nobody can really identify which is which in advance.

Knowledge Wharton: How widespread is this problem and what are some of the alternatives that are coming up? Taber: Theproblem was widespread enough to cause people to search for alternatives — especially after the first realistic alternative came on the market. There had been alternatives before, but Supreme Cork produced a plastic cork that got very wide acceptance, especially in the British market and then increasingly in other markets.

The first company that he started made plastic glasses; the second company that he started made plastic hockey helmets; the third company that he started was this cork company. Knowledge Wharton: You once said that the experience of the cork industry shows that monopoly is bad for consumers and also for the monopolist. What did you mean and what lessons could this offer to other industries?

Because cork was the only source of sealing bottles, the cork industry is predominantly in Spain and in Portugal. Cork is made in a lot of countries, but its made best made around the Mediterranean, from Sardinia to Tunisia, just along the coast of the western Mediterranean.

The largest cork producer is Portugal; the second largest is Spain. And, they had a monopoly. It was a very inefficient monopoly: They had no quality controls, it was a backyard industry and they had lousy consumer relations with their customers. They were fat and arrogant. It was a true monopoly. Knowledge Wharton: Is the cork industry fighting back as a result of all of these challenges and is there a dominant company that is taking the lead in all of that?

Taber: They are absolutely fighting back. They are very fortunate that a new generation of leadership came into the largest company. They are something of a producer but really they are distributors and that where the market share is very important, with distribution of cork around the world.

The company is called Amorim. This is a fourth generation family-run firm that was started in El Porto three generations ago. They had a new CEO who came in. Taber: Diversification is going to be the biggest thing.

I think the monopoly has been broken and it will never be put back together. Cork is losing some of its market share. One new one is glass stoppers, which a lot of people like. They call it the elegant solution. Just a couple of days ago, I was talking to a wine maker from Australia who is very excited about a second type of glass closure which he thinks is the ultimate solution. Was there somebody who held a funeral for a cork in New York City.

Can you tell us that story? This is because he is very much an iconoclast. He just does things that nobody else would dare do. And, one of the things that he did was, he had had a lot of problems with cork, like a lot of wine makers. He was getting tainted bottles and he just felt that it was unacceptable.

Then he turned to screw caps and what he thought was the best solution.