Let's say for a moment that you are a soft drink connoisseur... Every week you purchase a case of your favorite fizzy lifting beverage (Coke or Pepsi, Shasta or Fresca... Hey, it's your poison!).

Let's also say that almost every week, two of those bottles are flat. No bubbles, no carbonation. In an attempt to satisfy your tastes, you go out of your way and try different grocery stores. The same thing happens. What would you do? Accept it? Do nothing? Act like its no big deal?

Or, would you write a letter of complaint to the manufacturer, threatening that you're not going to buy their beverage anymore until they fix the problem? What if they sent you a letter back saying, "We know it's a problem, but only about five per cent of the bottles are affected, so get over it."

Would that make you mad? Well, in the particular, and sometimes snobbish world known as the wine industry, that's exactly what's happening.

Some five per cent of all wines that are closed by natural cork are tainted by a chemical compound called trichloranisole (TCA). TCA is inadvertently produced due to the chlorine treatment the corks undergo prior to washing and drying. The TCA on the cork then infects the wine, which causes the wine to have a moldy taste and aroma. This, in turn, makes the wine... quite frankly, suck (I can assure you this an official sommelier term).

And while the wine industry is well aware of this, other than squabbling with cork producers, they do nothing. Not really nothing, of course. A feeble attempt has been made with synthetic cork (plastic, polymer or composite), which is now in used by some wineries in order to alleviate the "cork taint" problem. The problem with these little beasts is that they can be a bear to remove, all but impossible to re-insert and no one really knows whether they will hold up under long-term aging (Will the polymers breakdown due to exposure to alcohol, etc?).

The wineries that are using synthetic corks are typically using them only on white wines that are intended to be consumed within a year or two of release. Needless to say, the synthetic stopper, at this point, has somewhat under whelmed the wine consuming public.

But there is another way. The solution, it seems, is simple, and seemingly cost-effective. Enter the ROPP, the roll-on, pilfer-proof closure, also known as the screw top.

Horrors, you say! Haven't we all been taught that the surest sign of a crap wine is the presence of a screw cap! Doesn't everyone know that mastery of the hallowed corkscrew is a mark of the cultural elite? What will the neighbors think? Relax. There is plenty of bad wine bottled with a cork (can you say Two-buck Chuck?).

Discerning wine aficionados know that over fifty years of study has gone in to creating the new and improved closures known as the ROPP (roll-on, pilfer-proof) or the more stylish sounding Stelvin Tap. But the rest of us hear "SCREW TOP" reverberating through our heads and envision nightmarish meals accompanied by Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill.

But, relax and re-think. The principal purpose of the wine stopper is to keep oxygen out and wine in. A piece of bark doesn't add flavor, prestige or value to the wine. The value of the wine is in the glass, as in, does it taste good? Anything that could potentially detract from that has got to go. Here is the skinny on screw caps: They have lately become the rage in white wines from Australia and New Zealand. In fact, the New Zealand Screw Cap Initiative is a collaboration of New Zealand winemakers who are challenging the industry by promoting screw caps as a superior wine seal to cork. They believe the screw cap produces better wine - finer aromatics, even maturation and zero risk of cork taint.

The trend is slowly spreading to California... Plump Jack has famously bottled half of their production of Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon with screw caps since 1997.

Downing Family Vineyards' "Fly by Night" Zinfandel is now in it's third release with a screw cap and Randall Grahm's Bonny Doon Vineyards switched last year to screw caps to stopper their large production wines "Big House" Red and White. I've even come across a good quality French white with a screw cap.

So, what's the delay in the rest of the industry following suit? Well, for one, not enough consumers are bitching about bad wine caused by cork taint. But perhaps the biggest opponent to the screw cap is the restaurant industry. Restaurateurs are a bit concerned that the public won't stand for three hundred percent markups on mediocre wine without the pomp and pageantry of the cork. They may be right, of course... consumers can be fickle creatures of habit. Just think of the problems that could arise out of skipping ceremony!

Imagine... cheaper, fresher wines at a restaurant without the officious waiter inexpertly performing the opening ritual tableside! Envision know-nothing wine snobs not smelling the cork! Eliminating the whole tasting dance because the wine is expertly and modernly sealed!

Oh the horrors, indeed.





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