screwtop

Champagne House To Test Out Metal Closures

Filed under: Wine

Over the past few years the wine world has gotten accustomed to the idea that screwtop doesn't mean poor quality. Now could the champagne cork be replaced by a metal cap too? Duval-Leroy is planning to start selling bottles with aluminium tops later this year. The company will start off using the new metal cap on a few bottles of
Duval-Leroy's clos des Bouveries to see if the world is ready for champagne without popping a cork. The new cap was designed to deal with the intense pressure that builds up inside a champagne bottle. Canadian company Alcan Packaging won't reveal the new top until it is officially launched next month.

The move alarms traditionalists and indeed anyone for whom that distinctive sound, the hard pop followed by the soft fizz of bubbles, evokes a Pavlovian response. In the Telegraph, Chrystele Ivins, a spokesperson for Alcan in Paris, promises that the new top will still make a pop sound and that it will be easy to open. That at least is welcome news for anyone who has ever wrestled with a cork or had a dangerous misfire. The success of the new closure however will rely less on the utility of it and more on public reaction.

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Tags: champagne, screwtop, wine

Spain Supports Cork Closures For Wine

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Wine

While many fine wine companies are embracing alternative closures that won't be happening in Spain any time soon. Drinks Business Review reports that Spain has determined that only bottles with cork closures will achieve the Denominacion de Origen (DO) status (Spain's version of France's AOC). The DO classification
affects still and sparkling wines in 11 of Spain's wine producing regions. The primary growing region for cork trees is Portugal and southern Spain. The law is good news for APCOR, a consortium of cork companies. APCOR recently launched a $3 million campaign to promote the use of corks. In related cork news, a study recently released claims that the cork and wine combo creates beneficial anti-tumor compounds. The study was done for the Association of Industries and Exporters of Cork to find reasons that cork is good for wine.

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Tags: cava, cork, portugual, screwtop, spain, spanish wine, wine

Innocork, the Latest Cork Taint Removal Technique

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Wine

It's been a while since we've had a cork taint story. The latest company to save the wine world from going screwtop is the Cork Supply Group which has created the INNOCORK process to remove TCA from natural wine corks. The INNOCORK process also gets rid of other off-aromas. The process involves cleaning corks in a steam distillation of ethyl alcohol that removes the TCA. The Cork Supply Group in Portugal has been testing the process for three years.

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Tags: cork taint, corkage, portugal, red wine, screwtop, tca, wine

The International Screwtop Initative Says Ditch The Cork

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Wine

We've been following the slow move of wines from cork to screwtop for a while, now there is an official international organization to promote screwtop wine. Decanter reports that the International Screwcap Initiative is an extension of the already existing New Zealand Screwcap Initiative, a group of wine makers who got together in 2002. The International Screwcap Initiative hopes to promote screwcaps in Europe and to convince people that screwcaps aren't just for white wines but can also be used with reds.

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Tags: cork, screwtop, wine