Screw Caps vs Corks
One of the most common questions we are asked is can I use screw caps on my own wine. The simple answer is no. In order to utilize screw caps on wine a special pneumatic machine is required that runs into the thousands of dollars.
Now new evidence is indicating that screw caps are not as “good” as first indicated as this article gleaned from the London Evening Times. Wine buffs have uncorked a campaign to banish screw caps from bottles.
The move comes after it was revealed screw caps can leave some wine just as tainted as corks can. Research carried out for this year's International Wine Challenge - the world's biggest wine competition - found faults caused by screw caps are almost as common as cork taint.
Meanwhile, technological improvements have meant the number of wine bottles spoilt by corks is in decline. The findings have been seized on by wine traditionalists, who hate screw caps and say cork has served the industry perfectly for hundreds of years.
Screw caps, are seen by some wine experts as industrial and lacking the romance of a cork, right, which gives a satisfying pop when the bottle is opened. However, they have been adopted widely by supermarkets because it was thought there was much less chance of wine going off under a screw cap - a problem said to affect 10% of bottles with corks.
Now tasters at the International Wine Challenge in London claim cork taint is in decline and problems affecting wines sealed with screwcaps have been underestimated. From a blind tasting of 13,000 wines, they discovered 4% of the wine with corks had faults from oxidation or high sulphide levels - giving it an eggy flavour - compared with 2% of screw-cap bottles.