Uncorked Wines
August, 2001
It may be time for all of us to grow up and accept the fact that traditional corks and fine wine may no longer be synonymous. Defenders of the traditional cork are losing the battle. At least in the West Coast there is definitely a powerful movement away from traditional corks in favour of synthetic closures.
Here, where producers are not as tradition bound as European counterparts, cork presents a problem. Cork taint is an ugly, stinky problem that even its staunch defenders cannot easily gloss over. The synthetics offered by SupremeCork and Neocork avoid that problem and now are much improved in the way they look and feel.
Recently both Iron Horse Vineyards in Sonoma Valley and Hogue Cellars in Washington’s Columbia Valley abandoned tradition in favour of the synthetic cork from SupremeCorq. "Our thinking ," explained Joy Sterling of Iron Horse, " is quite simple. We are now paying 42 cents a cork. This buys us four different hand sorts — two in Portugal and two here in California — and even then, there remains a 2-4% chance of cork taint. We have come to believe that the calibre of our wines and the concomitant prices (ranging from $24-50 a bottle) make it very difficult to be philosophical when any one bottle turns out to be corked."
Hogue Cellars, Washington’s second largest winery is now using synthetic corks in its mainstream wines. Gary Hogue, who estimates cork taint to be in the 5-10% range, explains that any problems once associated with synthetic cork have been resolved.
Joe Martin of St. Francis Winery was among the first to back synthetic corks which he used for his top quality wines. From his invaluable experience, wines age just as well, if not better, with synthetic corks.
The snobbish view that synthetic corks will only be acceptable as closures on cheap, low-level wines or supermarket wines is nothing but wishful thinking. In California, quality minded wineries such as Clos de Bois, Robert Mondovi, and Beringer are backing synthetic cork produced by a local company, Neocork.
At Iron Horse Vineyard, the decision was based solely on quality. "We have made this bold decision to use synthetic corks," added Joy Sterling, "in an effort to ensure that the quality of the wine when it reached the consumer is as we intended it to be when we bottled it."
Copyright 2001 Decanter Magazine
