[Don Plumley]

Corked wines used to be a huge problem. Cork producers ignored the warning signs, particularly those raised in New Zealand or Aus. So the Kiwis and Aussies single-handedly brought screwcaps into finer wines. For a vintner, the book, "To cork or not to cork" reads like a horror novel.

For wines that will be consumed shortly after bottling (e.g. Whites, especially Sauv Blanc from NZ, etc.), a stelvin/screw cap is a great closure. I have no qualms buying any wine with a screwcap.

There is still considerable debate over the slow ingress of oxygen through a cork that aids in the aging of wine. One of the big challenges of making wine that will go into a screwcap bottle is preventing something called Reduction, where the wine ends up with sulphur-like/burnt rubber odors. For you chemists out there, it's balancing the Redox equation.

The screwcap does remove some of the romance of cutting the foil and extracting the cork. But that romance is for naught if the wine is corked. While a few ultra luxury brands have put screwcaps on their bottles, given the dramatic improvement in cork quality and general high-end consumer perception, natural cork will always be the dominant closure.