What happen to cork's

The other night my girlfriend and I where enjoying our one year anniversary. As we where doing this we stop and pick up some wine. The same wine we enjoyed the year befor, much to our dismay there was no cork. I have notice the selection of wine is getting smaller.

So does the GRM brain trust have any answers?

Cork can harbor fungus that destroys wine and is more expensive than the alternatives.

Wine comes in boxes now.

Cork is not a perfect material for sealing bottles, and as noted it is more expensive than some of the alternatives now available. New world producers are more willing to use the newer closures, while European winemakers still tend toward cork.

I'm a traditionalist, and I always feel a bit disheartened when I find a plastic cork in place of the real thing. That said, I am oddly less bothered by screwtops on fresh whites that are intended to be consumed now, not aged.

As to the selection of wine, that's going to depend on where you go, but the market in general has been and remains in a glut. There's a huge amount of wine being produced around the world, while consumption rates are down in some key markets. You'll still pay at the top end, and the cheap crap is still cheap, but there are some tremendous bargains in the mid-range.

Wine and Beer is growing here in Michigan. I still see corks for all the local stuff.

Cork production being the finite thing that it is and the rate at which wine (edit: and beer and other delicious beverages that utilize cork stoppers) making and consumption are growing are the two major factors here.

There are also quality issues with some cork.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_wine_closure wrote: Alternative wine closures are substitute closures used in the wine industry for sealing wine bottles in place of traditional cork closures. The emergence of these alternatives has grown in response to quality control efforts by winemakers to protect against "cork taint" caused by the presence of the chemical trichloroanisole (TCA).

China doesn't grow cork.

carguy123 wrote: China doesn't grow cork.

Giggity!

It's a labor issue. Skilled cork soakers are getting hard to find:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mtVK-xaR0U

[edit] WTH? It keeps removing the link?

ThePhranc wrote: Wine comes in boxes now.

Take it out of the box an you get astro space wine.

I heard there is a cork shortage as well. Apparently there has been a rise in cork recycling which I didn't even know could be recycled.

Cork is a crappy sealant. The wine industry has wanted to move to screw caps for the last 4 decades but tradition and the idea that screw tops=cheap wine have stopped them. They attempted synthetic corks and rubber coated corks and other ways to make their product taste better and last longer, but still appeal to traditionalists but a screw top still wins. Cheap, sterile, recloseable and mass production friendly.

Tradition is very rarely a good reason to do, or continue to do anything.

Osterkraut wrote:

"To Recap"...

HAR!

Also - for hotel room/roadside consumption, screw top FTW.

ThePhranc wrote: Wine comes in boxes now.

+1 wineinnabox

ditchdigger wrote: Cork is a crappy sealant. The wine industry has wanted to move to screw caps for the last 4 decades but tradition and the idea that screw tops=cheap wine have stopped them. They attempted synthetic corks and rubber coated corks and other ways to make their product taste better and last longer, but still appeal to traditionalists but a screw top still wins. Cheap, sterile, recloseable and mass production friendly. Tradition is very rarely a good reason to do, or continue to do anything.

One guide to wine claims that corks have a failure rate that is often as high as one in 12 at avoiding corkiness or leakage. That's an insane failure rate for any other industry to put up with.

And it probably doesn't help that in a litigious(sp?) society, folks can be hurt by "flying corks" or have corkscrews damage the cork without removing it entirely from the bottle.

And I agree with the assessment: the wine market is glutted (folks are growing it EVERYWHERE, and if you live in a reasonably sized city you can find quite a bit of it. With wines available from all corners of the globe.)

I lived the last 22 years in Tn. Beer is VERY easy to find in stores there, wine? Not so much. Now that I live in Fl. I find the reverse seems to be true. ANY and EVERY convenience store has a wine "center"...beer? Not quite as much. (In Tn.pretty much every grocery store sells "tall boys" while in Fl. I can't find them...tho to be fair I may be in the "wrong" stores.)

MadScientistMatt wrote:

ditchdigger wrote: Cork is a crappy sealant. The wine industry has wanted to move to screw caps for the last 4 decades but tradition and the idea that screw tops=cheap wine have stopped them. They attempted synthetic corks and rubber coated corks and other ways to make their product taste better and last longer, but still appeal to traditionalists but a screw top still wins. Cheap, sterile, recloseable and mass production friendly. Tradition is very rarely a good reason to do, or continue to do anything.

One guide to wine claims that corks have a failure rate that is often as high as one in 12 at avoiding corkiness or leakage. That's an insane failure rate for any other industry to put up with.

As someone who takes part in the consumption of probably a good 25-30 cases of wine a year (meaning opening and consuming a portion of some 300-360 bottles), either I'm very, very lucky, or that one in twelve number is ridiculously overstated.

There is in fact a cork shortage. That is the primary reason. Cork comes from the pith layer of the cork tree and its not much good for much other than making cork. Its a sinew-y soft wood that makes poor lumber, burns with an acrid smoke, and isn't easily renewable.

Growing and killing cork for wine bottles is much like growing and killing elephants for their tusks. Wasteful and not ecologically smart.

Many wine-makers with low-brix final bottling actually prefer the air transfer of cork. The extra sugars continue to remain active which helps storage life, and its still considered an anaerobic seal. As the mitochondria of the yeast decompose, they out-gas CO2, which keeps tiny amounts of positive pressure in the bottle. Without the occasional transfer of a nitrogen and oxygen molecule, that wouldn't happen.

I rarely drink wine, so mine usually comes in a box :)

I'm still giggling at "cork taint"

Synthetic corks are very common and now screw tops are now acceptable on high-end wine. That was a MAJOR shift for the wine industry because of the taboo of screw tops.

That said, there is a real romance of being in a nice restaurant and having a waiter (or sommelier if it's an awesome restaurant) uncork your wine. Unscrewing it just isn't the same.

02Pilot wrote:

MadScientistMatt wrote:

ditchdigger wrote: Cork is a crappy sealant. The wine industry has wanted to move to screw caps for the last 4 decades but tradition and the idea that screw tops=cheap wine have stopped them. They attempted synthetic corks and rubber coated corks and other ways to make their product taste better and last longer, but still appeal to traditionalists but a screw top still wins. Cheap, sterile, recloseable and mass production friendly. Tradition is very rarely a good reason to do, or continue to do anything.

One guide to wine claims that corks have a failure rate that is often as high as one in 12 at avoiding corkiness or leakage. That's an insane failure rate for any other industry to put up with.

As someone who takes part in the consumption of probably a good 25-30 cases of wine a year (meaning opening and consuming a portion of some 300-360 bottles), either I'm very, very lucky, or that one in twelve number is ridiculously overstated.

...or, you may not mind the flavor of cork

02Pilot wrote:

MadScientistMatt wrote:

ditchdigger wrote: Cork is a crappy sealant. The wine industry has wanted to move to screw caps for the last 4 decades but tradition and the idea that screw tops=cheap wine have stopped them. They attempted synthetic corks and rubber coated corks and other ways to make their product taste better and last longer, but still appeal to traditionalists but a screw top still wins. Cheap, sterile, recloseable and mass production friendly. Tradition is very rarely a good reason to do, or continue to do anything.

One guide to wine claims that corks have a failure rate that is often as high as one in 12 at avoiding corkiness or leakage. That's an insane failure rate for any other industry to put up with.

As someone who takes part in the consumption of probably a good 25-30 cases of wine a year (meaning opening and consuming a portion of some 300-360 bottles), either I'm very, very lucky, or that one in twelve number is ridiculously overstated.

I'm trying to learn more about wine, but I'm nowhere near that consumption rate. I hope you've developed an awesome palate as a result.

The Mrs. and I were on a winery tour and I asked about the screw tops.

The tour waitress explained to us that the new cap technology let the wine breathe and age as well or better than the corks did.

She also mentioned that they still used corks on the higher end wines because of public perception.

Shawn