A billboard along the east side of Highway 101 in Nipomo reads “Better for wine. Better for the planet. Cork is the natural choice.” And with those words, a 400-year-old, billion-dollar industry fights back after years of losing market share to the humble screw cap.
Many Americans still wrongly associate the easy-to-use and re-use screw-cap tops with cheap jug wines. But thousands of wineries, many of them high-end producers, have switched from corks to something else.
Corks have nearly disappeared Down Under. Virtually every wine made in New Zealand and the vast majority of Australian wines are topped with a screw cap.
European winemakers still cling to natural cork—except for the Swiss, who were some of the first to jump on the screw-cap bandwagon.
Here in the United States, winemakers tried alternatives about 12 years ago.
The reason? To protect the wine from a chemical compound called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, otherwise known as TCA and more commonly called “cork taint.” TCA contamination ruins the wine, causing a musty off flavor.
Screw caps, on the other hand, eliminate almost all closure-related taints, which is why they’ve quickly gained in popularity.
Over the last decade, winemakers around the world went from using 300 million to 3.5 billion Stelvin-brand screw caps.
While TCA does come from cork, it can also come from contaminated bottling equipment, a winery barrel room, or chlorine bleach used to disinfect wineries.
Last year, several groups pooled their money, including the Portuguese Cork Association, which spent $21 million for a global PR campaign aimed at re-educating the public and the wine industry “about the technical, social, and environmental benefits of natural cork.”
Cork is a $2 billion industry, producing more than 12 billion cork stoppers each year. Over the last decade, cork producers lost business as more vintners tried to protect their wines from that musty menace. It served as a wake-up call.
“That was a great shot in the arm for the cork industry, which invested hundreds of millions of dollars in improving quality control of corks,” said Lance Ignon, spokesman for the 100% Cork campaign. “Now, if you buy cork from a reputable supplier, the chance of corks being spoiled by TCA is less than 1 percent. So cork is on a tremendous comeback.”
Of the top 100 premium wines in the United States, more than 60 percent are now sealed with natural cork, as opposed to 56 percent a year ago.
At least one local winemaker sees it differently. Larry Schaffer, who owns Tercero Wines in the Santa Ynez Valley and teaches “Intro to Enology” at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, has switched entirely to screw caps.
“I was at Fess Parker [Winery in Los Olivos] until recently, and about six months ago we did a cork trial,” he said. “The Cork Council of America claims that TCA rates are falling and in most cases it’s 1 percent. We used corks from all Cork Council of America companies. The best-case scenario was about 3 percent. The worst-case scenario was well over 20 percent.”
Schaffer understands the enchantment of opening a bottle with a cork, but said he wants “to ensure that, as a consumer first and foremost, and a winemaker second, that there’s gonna be consistency of the product that I put forth, and that the wonderful thing about cork, the fact that they’re natural, is also one of its problems.”
Ignon countered: “Despite the move by some wineries to alternative corks, American consumers have never waivered from their preference for cork. You see it in survey after survey. People prefer cork. They prefer the romance of cork. Once they understand the environmental benefits, it is that much more incentive to support cork.”
The cork industry hopes to appeal to people looking for the more Earth-friendly closure.
“It’s a product that’s recyclable, biodegradable, and it’s imminently sustainable,” Ignon said.
Cork comes from the bark of oak trees that grow in seven countries in the Mediterranean Basin. Cork woodlands cover a total of 6.6 million acres.
“These trees are really remarkable,” Ignon said. “They look like a California live oak until you get up close, and you notice the bark has a very thick sort of spongy material. After a tree has grown to the proper age—and that’s usually 40 years—a portion of the bark can be stripped every nine years, and that’s made into wine closures and all the other applications for cork. The tree goes on to live a healthy lifespan of 200 to 250 years.”
The environmental and economic benefits of the cork industry are substantial.
“These forests offset the carbon from 2 1/2 million cars every year. They provide habitat for thousands of animal and plant species. They regulate the groundwater,” Ignon said, adding that they also provide “the world’s highest-paid agricultural jobs because you have to be very skilled to take
off the bark.”
According to the 100% Cork campaign, artificial plastic stoppers and aluminum caps consume fossil fuels and use at least five times more energy per ton to produce, before millions of them end up in landfills and oceans.
However, the screw-cap industry points out that no product is wasted when using their closures. If even a small percentage of wines are “corked,” that’s a lot of glass bottles, paper, and wine tossed out—going to waste.
All this leaves vintners weighing what protects their wine and what protects the Earth.
“A lot of research that’s come out in the last five years on the negativity toward screw caps and the positive aspect of cork has been paid for by cork companies or paid for by the Portuguese government itself,” said winemaker Schaffer.
“There are some good discussions there, but I don’t believe the information that’s spread forth is necessarily objective,” he added.
While screw caps have been effective in sealing wine in the short term, some people wonder what happens to these wines after decades in a cellar.
“I have no concerns about any of my wines aging beautifully under screw caps,” Schaffer said. “Though there have not been many formal studies, there have been plenty of anecdotal data from Australia about wines aged for two decades or longer aging beautifully and still being fresh and full of life.”
And studies show the bulk of wine in America is consumed the same day it’s purchased at the supermarket, so aging isn’t a concern to most people.
For “old-school oenophiles,” the pomp and circumstance of pulling out the cork and hearing the hushed pop can never be replaced by a twist-off cap. Still, others say anything without TCA works for them.
Wendy Thies Sell doesn’t usually get story ideas from billboards, except in this case. Send your story suggestions to wthies@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 10-17, 2011.