Cork has been used for centuries to stopper wines. Unfortunately, it has an Achilles heel. As a living organism, the product of the cork oak tree can house and transmit a negative quality known as ‘corkiness’ or ‘cork taint’ – a dank, musty smell that can spoil a wine and strip it of its fruit. The culprit is trichloranisole (TCA), a chemical compound created by the interaction between the chlorine used to clean wine corks and the mold that can form in cork bark as the result of excessive moisture. The high incidence of cork taint in wine has led to the development of  a wide range of alternative closures, from synthetic corks to non-cork devices like the Stelvin, an advanced screwcap. While many consumers still associate cork with wine tradition, romance and quality, closures like the Stelvin actually do a better, more reliable job of preserving a wine’s character and freshness.

I am very sensitive to cork taint and am always dismayed when I open a bottle of wine that turns out to have been spoiled by a bad cork. When our family lived in England, we experienced this problem frequently with the European wines we drank. After we moved to California and got involved in the wine business, we learned what a huge problem this is for wineries. 

Once, while dining with friends in San Francisco, one of them ordered a white wine that was badly corked. After tasting it, he said, “I don’t care for it, but I think my wife will,” explaining that she drank many such wines, which is why he preferred red wines. After determining the wine was undrinkable, I had the sommelier replace the bottle, but the episode taught me a lesson: people can easily attribute cork spoilage problems to the style of the wine. 

As a small artisan producer, we felt we could not afford to lose new customers who, not recognizing cork taint, might ascribe its unpleasant manifestations to our wine rather than to a faulty cork. As a result, we decided to bottle our first Inman Family Wine, a 2002 Pinot Gris, with the Stelvin closure, which has been engineered to provide a leak-proof seal and boasts a long skirt resembling a traditional cork capsule. With the Stelvin, I know that someone who doesn’t like our wine is reacting to its style, not to cork taint. A new adaptation of the Stelvin, with a tin lining developed expressly for delicate white wines, helped persuade us this was the right move. 

Another argument for the Stelvin is convenience. Few households in America own a corkscrew, while many elderly wine drinkers have difficulty extracting corks. Even though the typical Inman Family customer is a sophisticated wine drinker with a good corkscrew, convenience remains a compelling issue for us. 

Reaction from consumers and restaurateurs to our use of the Stelvin has been very positive. Many cite the problems they have had with crumbling or cracking corks, cork-tainted wines, and re-corked bottles that leak when laid down in the refrigerator. We also have been reassured by research confirming that wines bottled with screwcaps age as well as wines with corks, and by studies indicating that consumers increasingly are unperturbed by high-quality wines sealed with screwcaps, a packaging choice favored these days by many high-end European, Australian and New Zealand producers. Approximately 4.6 million Stelvin closures were sold in the US during 2003, representing more than 380,000 cases. Pechiney, the manufacturer of the Stelvin closures, forecast 313% growth in the US market for 2004. That is on top of 206% growth experienced in 2003.