Paws on the Pavement- Closures

Howdy, folks! Po’Boy back again. Lately, I’ve heard my dad and owner of Slouch Hat Wines, M.P. Fowler, talk a lot about closure. I assumed he was going through something terrible, so I cuddled with him as much I could to comfort him. However, I recently realized he has been referring to wine closures – you know those things that seal the bottle - corks, screw caps, etc.— and finding the right one for Slouch Hat Wines’ Sauvignon Blanc and GSM. It turns out there are a lot of options out there and some very strong opinions as to which closure is best, and worst, for the wine. Since I no longer have to waste my time offering free cuddles, I decided to hit the streets to learn about the history of closures and to find out which one is best – or if it even matters!

Let’s take a step back in time to ancient Greece. The Greeks invented a lot of incredible things: democracy, Olympic games, Pythagorean Theorem, western philosophy (hedonism anyone?), Greek tragedies and comedies, and Dionysus (or maybe Dionysus, the god of grape harvest, winemaking, and fertility, invented the Greeks!). However, it is unlikely they invented the cork closure, since cork comes from cork trees, which grow primarily in Southern Portugal and Spain. Although they didn’t invent it, the ancient Greeks are the first civilization we believe used cork as a closure (the Egyptians may have also began using cork around this same time). Being the wise people they were, they knew when to adopt technologies better than their inventions and using cork as a closure was one of these wise adoptions.

A couple of centuries later the great Roman statesman and historian, Cato the Elder, wrote about the need to seal jars with cork to preserve the wine after fermentation, which proves the Romans also saw the value in cork closures. Unfortunately, the practice of using cork as a closure for wine was lost as the Roman Empire fell and the Middle Ages descended upon Europe. When the Roman Empire fell, the European and Mediterranean world became fragmented, and trade began to decline. The cork supply from the Southern Iberian Peninsula was disrupted by this decline, as well as the Moorish invasion, which created a Moorish Kingdom in cork country and ended most trade with Christian Europe.

It took roughly 800 years for corks to make a comeback – the Dark Ages, indeed! During this period, oak barrels from France continued to be used to store and transport wine and other liquids, but now a wooden bung wrapped in cloth took the place of a cork. As the “Dark Ages” receded across Europe an important development took place – glass bottles.  

Glass has been around for millennia, but the 17th century saw tremendous advancements in the ability to produce it at increased scale (lead was added). As glass bottles became more popular, a closure was needed to tightly seal the liquid inside. At first, they used glass closures similar to what you would find on a decanter today, but this was not a good seal, it was challenging to transport, and it was expensive to make. Thus, shortly after this development the cork made its grand comeback alongside a new invention: the corkscrew.

Back to the present. For ages humans have enjoyed the popping sound of a cork coming out of an amphora and, later, a glass bottle. If we have used cork for this long and we know it is the perfect closure, why would we ever change it? Cork is four times lighter than water, highly elastic, impervious to air, almost impermeable to water, difficult to burn, resistant to temperature changes and vibrations, doesn’t rot, and molds itself to its container. There is one major issue with cork, though – TCA.

TCA (2, 4, 6 – trichloroanisole) is a compound that is responsible for “corked” wine. This is the musty, wet cardboard, damp basement-like scent you sometimes pick up on a wine. Chlorine facilitates TCA growth and until the mid-1990s, corks were washed with chlorine… yikes.  Today, chlorine can be found in trace amounts in municipal water, which is used to clean winery equipment, so it can still sometimes spread to corks. TCA became such an issue that a group of wineries in the Clare Valley of Australia grouped together to bottle their entire 2000 vintage of Resiling in screw cap bottles. Within a few years a vast majority of Australian and New Zealand wines were bottled with screw caps and as winemakers began to notice that consumers were not particularly turned off by screw caps, wineries all over the world slowly began to follow suit.

This led to the first major existential crisis for the cork industry since the invasion of the Moors in the 8th century. It was time to innovate or die. Luckily, it innovated. In 2021 a process was created to make corks TCA free. These TCA-free corks are a little bit more expensive, but even without the guaranteed TCA-free process only about 1% of wines are found to be “corked.” However, in cork’s moment of weakness, two other types of closures attempted to bring down its reign – synthetic corks and glass stoppers.

I joked earlier about my dad needing cuddles and closure. Well, if you ever give him a bottle of wine with a glass stopper, he will actually need those cuddles. Glass stoppers are the biggest pain in the ass to get out of a wine bottle. You will end up drinking the whole bottle out of frustration and feeling awful the next day. You can blame the glass stopper. I told you there were strong opinions on this topic.

At least the mad scientists that created synthetic corks realized humans enjoy the tradition of taking a cork out of a bottle. They went into their labs and created a plastic, non-biodegradable, cork lookalike that does not properly seal in the bottle. But, hey, it’s cheap… I will spend no more time discussing glass stoppers or synthetic corks. They are travesties to the development of wine closures.

So, we are left with two options: cork and screw caps. It’s a shame that screw caps have a bad reputation for being a cheap alternative to corks. Personally, I’m a fan and with the technological advancements in screw caps, ultra-premium wines can be bottled with them. It’s very convenient to screw the cap back on and stick the bottle back in your wine fridge for later… that is, if you’re someone who doesn’t drink the whole bottle (no judgment).

Regardless, in my opinion the only choice for Slouch Hat Wines Sauvignon Blanc and GSM is obvious – cork. Cork is truly the perfect closure, especially now that TCA is no longer a threat. The beautiful sound a cork makes when it is removed from the bottle is a sound humans have enjoyed for centuries and I can only imagine my feline ancestors in ancient Greece and Egypt enjoyed swatting and chasing corks around their houses like I do today. So, who are we to ruin this great tradition? Humans and cats alike receive great joy in uncorking a great bottle of wine!

Po’Boy Fowler

Chief Field Correspondent

Slouch Hat Wines