The environmental argument: corks vs. screwcaps

WINE TALK
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Perhaps a movie? Conspiracy Theory 2? Mel Gibson could star. You’d have to be “well-funded” to fly every wine writer in NZ to, where? Auckland? Wellington? Marlborough? From all across the vast land mass of New Zealand? Business class, was it?

Hard to know what to answer on first 2 questions as future speculation. John Malkovich might be a better fit than Mel. Mel is too much of a redneck, hard-assed, shoot from the hip Aussie.

Yes, to number 3. The Kiwi writers, around 24 as I recall, were flown to Marlborough. Everybody and his dog was there A, B and C list writers. I popped over for an afternoon from Wellington, 17k away. At that point I was columnist for The NZ Herald or The Dom-Post. Both are the 2 main dailies, and I moved from one to the other around then. Many other writers had been flown in the night before, and others stayed over that night with hotels/dinners paid for by NZSCI.

The NZSCI went to Australia and gathered up writers there in a central location, Sydney and, possibly, Melbourne, flew in writers from outside cities too. I’d have to dig deep in archives to find that, but I’m sure if you contacted NZSCI guys, they could tell you with more precision.

And final no, Kiwi writers weren’t flown business class. That was reserved for other writers coming from long distances like UK, Asia and US primarily at later stages. Business vs coach really depends on how many eyeballs a writer can command.

I forgot to mention that Michael Brajkovich and Tyson Stelzer focused on Parker via Mark Squires board shortly after the launch of the SC Initiative. The Kiwis didn’t have the money to conquer USA easily, and their long term markets were UK focused so that’s where the money had to go. And UK supermarket chains, Tescos and Sainbury’s were their biggest market outlet. The supermarkets were driving SC sales at that point, Tescos had pledged to be 100% SC by 2005 if I recall correctly. The person in charge of their buying department behind that grandiose scheme was replaced later.

One shouldn’t forget producers switching from cork to SC are saving up to a buck a bottle depending on currency and location. bring in big volume producers like Villa-Maria, PR, Penfolds, Constellation and you are talking about millions to throw around on promotion, discounting and marketing…

There is speculation around that the savings from SCing allowed Aussie and, to a lesser degree, Kiwi wines to be heavily discounted in UK market. That, alongside the aesthetics of SC, contributed greatly to the collapse of the Australasian wine market. My sense is that consumers have noticed a drop in quality and character, which has also played a hand here.

All that said, the NZSCI on all counts was brilliant marketing, textbook stuff with flawless execution. Too bad the product never lived up to the ‘perfection’ that was claimed.

But there is far too much detail to flesh out on a forum. A book or film would work much better. George Taber’s To Cork or Not to Cork, was a good start. But it only hinted at a lot of sleezy stuff that went on behind the scenes and the active ignorance of science/chemistry that took hold subsequently.

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How were all these winemakers persuaded to jump onto the bandwagon? Particularly as most marketing departments were so scared of the consumer backlash that nearly everyone hedged their bets by closing wines in both seals for a few years.

Graham, I think you are Australian, so the situation was a little different there. It is true that big producers like Montana/Brancott/Pernaud-Ricard held off for a couple of years (Villa Maria an exception) before going totally to SC, letting the little guys do the pioneering first.

NZ had many producers dump all their wines, reds and white, into SC immediately without bottling under a choice of closures. It was a black and white, stop start situation. Many, stupidly, stopped trialing a variety of closures so had (currently have) no real reference to compare how their own wines would develop over time. The uptake in NZ was much faster and more complete than Oz. NZ had to get a critical mass to make the pitch work and there was a lot of ‘either you are with us or against us’ going on, on the ground. Arms were twisted and a small group of believers controlled key choke points within the media and the industry. Those who were skeptical or wanted more information made available were ridiculed gotten rid of or ostracized. That’s easy to do in a little place like NZ. But it’s also easy to do in a slightly larger, small place like Australia too.

But, like I said, all this really deserves airing in a bigger format like a book.

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I shall be fascinated to read your rewrite of history when it arrives.

Graham, rewriting history is what a good historian should be all about–extracting popular myth from the reality of a situation and driving a wooden stake through its heart.

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It was also argued that cork for wine bottle stoppers represents only a tiny percentage (although what percentage wasn’t mentioned) of corks total usage. But even if it is 10% or 2%, then that would represent a drop in the value and thus earnings of a sector already very much under siege. How many people writing here would like their salary or sales or value of their product to decrease by that percentage? And unlike screw caps, it’s not just jobs, but a way of life that is being sustained.

Arribes is a wine region that was once covered in vineyards, but now only has only 750 hectares left. People used to make wine, cheese, ham, for their own consumption, in what used to be largely self sustaining communities. Their carbon footprint was next to zero. I interviewed an elderly couple that never owned a car or a tractor, but used a mule.

I’m not romanticizing rural life, I live in a small village and know full well things are not and never were a bed of roses. But those values and that way of life is closely tied up with the wine we drink and the food we eat, and as someone else who moved to Arribes from a high paying job in Madrid said, in the city people study how to be more ecological, here people live it.

Maybe screw caps should be used in some cases, I’ve heard all sorts of arguments for and against. But the cork forest, like the Amazon rain forest, isn’t just some damn trees. It goes way beyond wine, with many things hanging in the balance, and that should be carefully considered in any argument.

Zev Robinson
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I’m glad that Zev popped in some comments here.

I saw an article in last week’s Harpers (UK wine trade magazine) that the price of cork paid to the cork farmer had halved over the last decade. So anyone claiming the forests aren’t endangered–with all the ecological, economic and socio-political fall out that entails–just doesn’t know what they are talking about.

Incidentally, Zev’s web is worth consulting. He has produced an excellent documentary film about the Southern Spanish wine regions inland from around Valencia. He focuses on the potential extinction of Bobal grapes and the producers who have worked it for hundreds/thousands of years.

Two years ago I judged at Mondial du Bruxelles competition held in Valencia. After judging in the morning judges were taken into the wine regions inland for lunch or dinner. Taveling past wonderful old, non-irrigated, bush vine-trained vineyards (which none of our PR handlers seemed to know anything about) we’d end up at some modern ‘Cal-Aussie’ lookalike winery plopped down in the middle of hundreds of new, high trellis vineyards planted to sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, cabernet, merlot and syrah. None of which were suited to the climate, needed irrigation, seemed to be planted on soils better suited for crops and, undoubtedly, ended up being artificially acidified to the gills. The wineries had new French oak stacked to the ceiling and were staffed by young flying wine makers from all parts of the New World. It seemed all about cheap land and cheap labor to tend the vines.

The wines were heavily spoofulated and spoke of nowhere, most were destined for beach restaurants full of foreigners and UK supermarkets.

At one evening event there were over 200 locally produced wines for us to sample almost all from the above grapes. I asked 2 sommelliers to find me any wine made from the indigenous Bobal red grape and after a long half hour search, they found 2. They were easily the most interesting wines on the table. The only interesting wines on the table.

If we don’t start using this endangered biological heritage, we’ll lose it forever. And its not just the grapes or corks or whatever, it’s also about supporting the people who live year around in villages where they can walk to their vines and their impact on the environment is minimal.

So go check out Zev’s site, buy his DVD and show it to everyone you know. And share a bottle of Bobal in support.
[soap.gif]

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more on cork decline prices and danger to broader wildlife/biodiversity issues.

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Haha, very punny.

Eric,

Better a punny counter-argument, than a puny one.

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And yet nothing to put this entire discussion in context. Therefore I shall assume that the carbon impact of an enclosure is in fact less than 1% of the overall impact of a bottle. In others words all of this is a pile of crap and a pointless debate. Or please, do quote some figures, even very approximate, to put this debate in context and prove it is not just an exercise in stupidity. Pretty please.

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From the article:

“What I am seeing is a decrease on the price paid to the farmers by their cork,” Hidalgo observes, stressing his belief that: “It must be related to an increase in the use of alternative stoppers such as screwcaps and plastic.”

He attributes this development to an ill-judged kneejerk reaction on the part of the wine industry, “wrongly blaming cork for all wine problems, as well as the increase in demand and price for cork stoppers that happened some years ago when world wine production increased dramatically”.

Oh, I see. So there was increased demand and price some years ago. And winemakers turned to alternatives. While cork now has 70% of the (bigger) market. So are they worse off than they were before the “increased demand and price”?
There’s a school of thought that says one of the consequences of that ‘increased demand’ for cork was a commensurate decline in the quality of corks supplied (at least to certain markets). Which was a major factor in the drive to find alternatives.
Can’t have it both ways…
G

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Paul, fair enough. I don’t actually care much at all about the carbon argument.

Eric, You’ve stated you don’t much care about the carbon argument. Fair enough.

Almost all the published writing I’ve done on closures (World of Fine Wine, Harpers, Decanter, Sante, Enologicos, Wine, Gourmet Traveler, etc) has used science based information to focus purely on wine quality and ageability, excepting this thread and an article that was commissioned by Slow Food a few years back. So while my concern is primarily about the former, many, many other people are more concerned about the environmental issues involved here. In this thread I’ve tried to compare apples with apples accurately, which is what this thread was about.

That said, context is a big, moving target. You can play %'s with closure vs bottle. Or you can add in the entire footprint of wine production on top of that or add in the footprint of the consumer on top of that too. Or we all can sit on our hands and do nothing… Everyone has a right to their own choice, hopefully one based on accurate information.

This whole footprint game its going to be all about stacking up little gains vs little to big losses. And its about showing some effort and consistency. Producers claiming to be organic, environmentally friendly, or sustainable should be consistent in the message they are putting forward. I saw one summary stat based on the PR report (which I have yet to verify) that said one cork scrubs around 8 grams of CO2 out of the environment vs one SC which puts 118 grams into the environment. Comparing apples with apples, if those stats hold, it’s a compelling gain in one area. And if that offsets some of the carbon in glass, that’s a gain not a loss, in the apples vs oranges argument.

But the environmental argument is broader than just carbon counting. Do we need more plastic in our lives? Do you want plastic and leached into your wine? Do we want more in our rivers and landfills?

Where I do think there is a significant argument to be made is with that wall of cork trees holding back desertification and maintaining biodiversity in very marginal climates. And if those areas turn into uninhabited, unproductive ‘Dust Bowls,’ how will that dry out and endanger the climates in places like Douro, Penedes, Rioja, Ribera, Tuscany and other wine regions, perhaps eventually reaching over the mountains to the north. It all seems to be pretty interconnected to me. I suspect a few other people might share that view and don’t think that is crap. All this gets buried and not counted in the % game.

I like aged wine from all the places above, but I prefer aged wine that is closer to 13% than 15.5-17%. I’d also like the grapes that make those wines today, and I’d hate to see them changed because they were forced to adapt to hotter climates.

I don’t see how any of the environmental issue boils down to a simple matter of % points. I don’t see it as crap either specifically because closure choice does directly impact on the ageability and quality of wine.

I am much more concerned about the ageability of wines.

Now there is an issue that really needs to be addressed more accurately. There are many points in this thread that relate to this that have left wrongful impressions which are worth delving into much deeper. John touched on a couple of these in his response to some of the wonky science that Tim had presented initially. I’ll get back with some more thoughts on this later. Although it probably belongs in a different thread, because the points were brought up above, I’ll continue commenting on this thread.

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Oh, I see. So there was increased demand and price some years ago. And winemakers turned to alternatives. While cork now has 70% of the (bigger) market. So are they worse off than they were before the “increased demand and price”?
There’s a school of thought that says one of the consequences of that ‘increased demand’ for cork was a commensurate decline in the quality of corks supplied (at least to certain markets). Which was a major factor in the drive to find alternatives.
Can’t have it both ways…

Last week I saw an article published in UK’s Harper’s magazine that said the prices paid to cork producers halved over the last 10 years. That’s unsustainable economically if true.

Graham, that’s an interesting observation and it does seem contradictory at face value. I don’t have any information on historic cork pricing or production figures. There must be some wine makers who have followed cork prices over the last 2 decades that would know how high cork prices were at peak of demand.

As for a bigger market and demand being inconsistent with pricing issues. Yes producers can be worse off. There have been hundreds of millions of dollars spent on research and technology to solve cork problems. I’m sure it wasn’t all paid for by cash. I suspect that the price of SC and synthetics has driven down the price of cork to make them compete on the lowest levels. When I was in Argentina earlier this year I heard that synthetics were dumping at rock bottom prices because sales had tanked in USA, forcing other closures to compete at near loss levels in that market.

Talking with wine makers there, the issue was all about lowest price, not quality. In that case, if cork manufacturers are selling low to compete with synthetics and SC, the pressures would be on cork growers to sell at unsustainable prices eventually.

Like with quality wine producers, everyone needs to make a decent living to be able to ensure quality control and the best possible product. That goes for cork growers as well as grape growers. The best cork growers have to sign up for certification and follow ISO standards which costs them more than in the days when they didn’t understand their product and how to produce the highest quality.

Here in NZ and, probably, in Australia too, the great shame is that all the current, heavy discounting and dumping of poor quality wine has the greatest impact on the small quality producers who are subsequently priced out of the market. It’s the same for closures.

As for poorer quality cork reaching Australia and NZ a decade ago, I’ve heard the speculation that global demand forced low quality cork to be used. It could be that was the case, but there were lots of factors going on then too. Here in NZ I was told that one of the problems was believed to have been a local cork distributor taking back rejected cork and recirculating it to other unsuspecting customers. But also, there was a lot poor quality, lower grade, short corks bought by wine producers on purpose just save money. It’s probably a bit of all of this. At any rate, I have no doubt that much more TCA existed 10 years ago than exists in cork products today.

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Paul, the irony here is that pretty much all that I care about is what is in the glass, and if anything I am very pro-cork (because when it works it works oh so magically) and quite skeptical of anything artificial. That said, in a thread about the environmental impact of cork versus screwcap, the sheer fact that the pro-cork guy can’t or won’t given even a shred of data, a rough approximation, a back of the napkin estiamte, ANYTHING to even put the entire discussion of THIS THREAD in context with the overall carbon cost of a bottle of wine, well it makes me trust you MUCH less. In fact I find you to be very evasive and pretty much skirting what I think is one of the key questions raised in the whole thread. Suffice it to say that you are actually alienating someone who is most likely to WANT to side with you. That is ironic in my tasting notebook.

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Eric,

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on what are the key points of this thread and disagree on context as well.

Paul

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So do you have no clue, or do you simply refuse to answer the question?

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So do you have no clue, or do you simply refuse to answer the question?

I answered your question in the original response to your query, didn’t you read it? “I don’t know, but I’m sure there are people who do. It would also depend on your bottle and your match with closure. I’m sure there are hundreds of permutations. I’m bored enough having to chase down all these geeky closure facts and fantasies (now they are down here I won’t have to again)…so someone else can argue about bottles on another thread if they want.”

I’m happy to defer to people who know more about something than I do. Several other people then piped in with their ideas and I had no figures to counter anything they said or I would have.

And then I said, "That said, context is a big, moving target. You can play %'s with closure vs bottle. Or you can add in the entire footprint of wine production on top of that or add in the footprint of the consumer on top of that too. “

I assume someone is probably doing that work somewhere for someone, but I haven’t seen any reports so I can’t give any accurate figures. Can you?

And then I explained there are many contexts you can frame this in. The one that you think is important is less than the one I believe is important.

And the context I raised could mean that you may not (more likely) won’t be drinking old wines or any wines from the regions I mentioned, if the forest area are reduced in size. In that case, how much CO2 they are offsetting is less important than the barrier they provide now.

There is no evasion, just disagreement.

Paul

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Have fun wandering in the trees. Clearly you can’t see the forest.

However, there is only one true idiot here. That would be me for asking a simple question and wasting my time thinking I would get an answer. Farking idiot. That’s me. Seeya.

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And Henschke has started to bottle their Hill of Grace under SC after trialing it for many years…

SC allows air in…I think that’s been proven. It allows air in at the same rate as the best corks…The best corks can actually allow LESS air in than SC although SC tends to be close and more important, LESS VARIABLE. I keep seeing arguments that SC doesn’t allow air in and that the wines undergo a reductive process but that goes out the window when they’ve already shown that to not be the case.

I don’t know where you’re getting this NZ information from but seems rather off to me since they have trialed and continue to trial both cork and SC on the same wine in Australia and none of the places in NZ have indicated it is any different there.

When people say TCA taint has been greater on SC than cork lately, I have to laugh. That is most definitely not true and just personal experience by many people would discount this immediately. I have not heard ANYONE actually claim this with a straight face.

One thing I will agree with is that the initial bottling and the development or changing of the cork might have some additional benefits (while adding some variability and risk to the wine) that SC can not provide…And yes, cork still has that romance and tradition associated with it…

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SC allows air in…I think that’s been proven.

It allows air in, but what has been proved through clinical studies is that it is not anywhere near enough to stave off Sulphide Reduction. So while technically you are correct, in reality you are wildly wrong. The real effect is that tin lined SC are virtually anaerobic in nature. There is a direct causal effect between tin lined SC and the development of sulphide reduction faults. SC PR has endlessly blamed the wine, not the closure, but all the science says they are wrong. People, journalists and winemakers who don’t understand the chemistry correctly continue to make this claim.

Unfortunately, this IS Rocket Science and people making claims about oxygen permeability and its effect on wine quality need to be consulting people with at least PHDs in chemistry. ALL of the clinical trials (peer reviewed out of Bordeaux/France) and all of the (non-peer reviewed) trials done by AWRI have had the same outcome. The rate is 100% sulphide reduction developing under tin lined SC from 6-18 months after bottling, the same wines bottled under a variety of cork types and synthetics did not develop those characters.

In my experience, predicting the development/lack of development/level of faultiness-falseness of varietal character under SC has been far more variable than any problems I’ve previously faced with wines under oxygen permeable stoppers (excepting synthetics after a couple of years). The end result of these variability issues are different, but just as damaging to wine quality.

The fact that Tim is working on permeable liners (indeed urgent research on this has been active for several years in this area) attests to how wrong the premise has been that wine maturation is an anaerobic process. John gave a very eloquent explanation above as to why this is the case. If you understand what John has discussed above, you will not understand that it will not be an easy task to accomplish this under SC. It is clear that Tim still does not understand the mechanisms of cork permeability and does not have command of the scientific literature he should have to accomplish that. I had hoped for more.

It allows air in at the same rate as the best corks…The best corks can actually allow LESS air in than SC although SC tends to be close and more important, LESS VARIABLE

.

Both these points are incorrect as well. One short answer for variability is that scientific studies have no proved that SC are less variable than cork by a factor or 1 or 2, not the totally fallacious ‘1000 fold’ variability rates for cork that most Australasian’s have perpetuated. Even AWRI have backed off this false claim, which some of their members had mistakenly made previously. Another short answer is that the BEST SC might eventually imitate the BEST corks, not the other way around. Again, if you read John above it’s clear that won’t be easy. I had hoped to address all these points through Tim’s initial responses eventually and don’t have time to detail this now, but will asap.

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I haven’t seen anything to suggest that they do not allow air in or enough air in. I have not seen the AWRI back off their claims either although it would be interesting to read. Do you have any articles to back these up? Or maybe I missed it in the previous posts…

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Kevin,

Sorry really no time right now, but I would be happy to put you on to some references eventually.

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Well, for a simple part: a cork weighs about 1 oz, a bottle nearly 50 (3 pounds or so). Thus the closure takes about 2% of the shipping component of the carbon footprint. The other pieces (glass production, cork/screwcap production, grape growing, wine production) I have no idea! But I suspect 1% for the closure is probably high.