How do 'fake' corks differ from authentic cork?!
How do 'fake' corks differ from authentic cork?
I've noticed lately that many more wineries are using twist tops and 'fake' corks due to an increased demand for real cork and not enough to supply that demand. Is the wine affected at all by not using real cork? Is there a taste difference? Could the same taste be reached by using even a twist top?
Answers:
The reason for wineries using alternative closures is *not* because they cannot buy real corks.
The reason is because they do not want their wine to be spoiled by cork taint. About 5% of all wines closed with corks are spoiled to some degree or other.
Some wineries use different closures dependingon teh market. Many UK supermarkets demand alternative closures because they do not want customers returning bad wines, on the other hand, some markets reject them because they consider screwcaps mean cheap wines. The entire subject is a minefield
Screwcaps have been used for many decades, and the high tech screwcaps such as the Stelvin offer excellent closure. The 'plastic' corks which sowed great promise, have suffered poor reputation recently because the early ones showed they would not offer a good seal for more than a few years, also they were hard to remove.
Bear in mind that about 90% of all wines purchased are consumed within 24 hours.
The questions you ask about taste differences are ones which the wine industry and wine lovers have been arguing about for a long time, and there are very strong anti & pro cork camps.
It is impossible to give the entire story here -- there are books on the subject and thousands of pages on the internet.
In brief: the consensus of opinion is that of ther alternatives, screwcaps are better than 'plastic' corks. Screwcaps are good for wines that will be kept up to 10 years.
With real corks you wil on average have one bad bottle in every two cases of wine, but they have a record in aging wines for decades.
The crux is oxygen transmission. It is considered that corks allow a small amount of oxygen into the bottle which helps aging, but that screwcaps do not. Majority of people think ox-trans is necessary for good aging (I am talking here of 15+ years)
Another rarely mention thing is that even good corks give a taste of cork to wine. Try pouring two glasses of water before you go to bed and frop a cork in one of them. Take a mouthful next moring, and you'll spot that cork taste you get in wines.....
See these books Wine Bottle Closures by Jamie Goode http://www.flavourpress.com/ and Screwed For Good by Tyson Stelzner http://www.winepress.com.au/screwed.htm...
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For most wines of average quality the cork is the worst way to close them. Cheap, and uneven quality corks result in greater than average failures, but people associate cork with quality and other closures with cheapness. Its all about image and guilt by association than any real measure of quality. In the past screw caps were only used for soda pops, fortified wines and cheap sweet fruity wines (soda pop wines).
Synthetic Corks, Screw tops, even Boxes are far more reliable for shorter periods of storage. This is especially true of boxes that seal out both light and air and continue to do so even when opened. This is perfectly fine for most wines since surveys indicate that 90 percent of all wine in consumed within one month of purchase.
The wine consumer is just not mentally prepared to pay $75 for a box of Cabernet or $110 for a Chateau de Carton. I myself wouldn't buy a screw cap over $15, and scowl disapprovingly when I get a $40-75 bottle with a synthetic cork, even though intellectually I know the truth, my perceptions are so deeply rooted that it doesn't matter. My thought process is that if the maker really thought they had a quality product then why are they using a closure associated with cheapness.
Aside: Have you ever wondered why most cake mixes require the addition of raw eggs? They can produce a better, safer, more consistent product by adding dried eggs to the mix before it is packaged. So why don't they? Because when they first tried, the consumer refused to believe that a mix could be any good unless you add eggs to it. So the consumer continued to add eggs anyway. With double the eggs and double the protein it ruined the cake. Consumers didn't blame themselves for not following instructions, they blamed the cake makers for selling a bad product. So cake mix makers went back to having consumers add the egg themselves. In the same way consumers think cork equals quality, anything else doesn't. Perception trumping reality.
For great wines that need to be "laid down" and age for years or even decades cork is still the standard. Cork is still considered more reliable for really long term storage, and probably plays a minor role in the aging of the wine itself owing to its porosity. The real matter is that for these wines (less than 1 percent of all wine sold) it would be a 15-20 year experiment to prove synthetics or alternative closures work as well, and no one wants to be the first to risk their reputation and livelihood. Especially when the consumer will expect even demand a discount for being part of that experiment.
The cork itself does not markedly influence the taste, unless of course it is tainted. The spores which cause taint need only be present in 5 parts per trillion to ruin a wine, and can be very hard to detect from the dry cork itself (by smell for example), however are very noticeable once they contaminate wine (when you taste it, you know it). Most of the other issues with corks come from improper storage (heat, humidity, and letting the corks dry out by standing the bottles upright.)
As a home wine maker I use the "fake" corks as they seal better and the quality of natural corks sucks now. The new type seal a whole lot better and you do not have to store the bottles on the side anymore.