Chris Hatcher, chief winemaker of Wolf Blass, has long been an ardent supporter of screwcaps, leading the charge by introducing screwcaps all the way up the range to the Wolf Blass Platinum Label wines. He has developed an elegant diagram, which isn’t easily reproducible for this website, but can fairly readily be understood. On the vertical axis you have aged characters, and on the horizontal (bottom left intersection) you have time in years. While the two closures are identical (barring TCA taint) for the first year or so, after two to three years you see more developed characters emerging under the cork closure. While the difference is not great, some argue that the greater expression of age is a good thing, not a bad thing. Neither Chris nor I accept that argument, but acknowledgement that it is possible to argue its benefit.
Around 10 to 12 years, the aged characters under cork continue to the point where, depending on the quality of cork, the quality of the bottle neck, the nature of the storage and other variables, the aged characters start to take on different dimensions such that no two bottles are the same. At this point the bottles under screwcap are all identical to each other and the wine enters a plateau that can extend for decades, with incremental changes over time. There is no ‘Eureka!’ moment, nor is there any ‘drink yesterday’ alarm bell.
Stephen Henschke has added his own views by saying that cork imparts a taste to the wine which can be detected even where it is a barrel-aged red wine, or a barrel-fermented white wine.
Chris Hatcher reduces this concept to simplicity: there is no point in the development of a white wine where the cork provides a closure as good as that provided by a screwcap. There is much misunderstanding about reduced/sulphidic characters under screwcap: the fault is not the closure, as the vast majority of white wines show no such characters, but the fault of the winemaker in not ensuring that the wine is free from the signs of or precursors of reduction. Even here there is room for debate: the eminent French researcher, the late Emile Peynaud, often wrote of the pleasant effect/taste of slight reduction. He saw this as simply being the opposite of oxidation. I won’t go further down this track, because it leads into the scientific thickets of the redox potential of wine, and its constantly changing impact.
Around 10 to 12 years, the aged characters under cork continue to the point where, depending on the quality of cork, the quality of the bottle neck, the nature of the storage and other variables, the aged characters start to take on different dimensions such that no two bottles are the same. At this point the bottles under screwcap are all identical to each other and the wine enters a plateau that can extend for decades, with incremental changes over time. There is no ‘Eureka!’ moment, nor is there any ‘drink yesterday’ alarm bell.
Stephen Henschke has added his own views by saying that cork imparts a taste to the wine which can be detected even where it is a barrel-aged red wine, or a barrel-fermented white wine.
Chris Hatcher reduces this concept to simplicity: there is no point in the development of a white wine where the cork provides a closure as good as that provided by a screwcap. There is much misunderstanding about reduced/sulphidic characters under screwcap: the fault is not the closure, as the vast majority of white wines show no such characters, but the fault of the winemaker in not ensuring that the wine is free from the signs of or precursors of reduction. Even here there is room for debate: the eminent French researcher, the late Emile Peynaud, often wrote of the pleasant effect/taste of slight reduction. He saw this as simply being the opposite of oxidation. I won’t go further down this track, because it leads into the scientific thickets of the redox potential of wine, and its constantly changing impact.
