The cork oak cork is only the optimal solution for the sealing process when there were no other canning processes hundreds of years ago.
It is not the best sealing material, it is easy to leak, and it brings TCA pollution. The latest research surface is best to preserve the wine. The sealing process is a screw cap. If it is necessary to remove the ceremonial feeling, the best is the polymer plug. There is foreign matter pollution, no denaturation, the famous ponsot is the polymer plug used, or the same as the cork stopper, but because of the high cost, it has not been widely used.
To put it bluntly, as long as it can seal the bottle mouth, anything can be done, but now the low-end wine consumers are blindly pursuing a sense of ritual (because there is no taste, dozens of pieces of one hundred pieces are forced to be low)
In addition, the cork origin and material production company is desperate to do public relations in order to protect employees.
So most of the wines that you see in supermarkets are still tied with cork stoppers.
Indeed, most of the wines used today are cork, but in fact there are many other materials in addition to cork. Here are some common wine stoppers for the subject and a brief description of the benefits and disadvantages of the various stoppers.
Cork stopper
The cork is a tree that is widely planted in Portugal (scientific name cork oak). After a few decades, its bark can be harvested for oak plugs and harvested again every nine years. These barkes are harvested, air-dried, sterilized, and stamped into the cork we see. There are many advantages to using cork stoppers. Wine is a low-grade wine that is easily oxidized and deteriorates. It requires a good seal. The cork has a very good elasticity, sealing, and no odor, just in line with making wine stoppers. Moreover, the cork wooden texture has many tiny pores that allow a very small amount of air to come into contact with the wine, making the wine more complex and rounded during the ageing process, and the wine can be more varied. But the oak plug is not perfect, but also has its own flaws. The wine with oak stopper has a polar probability of “corked wine”, meaning that the cork is contaminated with some unpleasant taste. “Moldy wet cardboard the taste of”. The main cause of cork contamination is a compound called TCA, which is highly active and consists of plant phenolic compounds, fungi and chlorine. So in order to eliminate this risk, many other plugs were invented instead.
2. Synthetic plug
Synthetic plugs are more affordable than natural cork stoppers. The synthetic plug is a plug which is bonded with a scrap made of a cork and then bonded with an adhesive. Good sealing and no TCA pollution. But many wineries are still more willing to use the complete natural cork, because it seems that their wine will be more graded.
3. Plastic plug
I have used the plug made of chemical plastics completely. I have opened it many times. Although there is no cork pollution, the bottle opening experience is not good. It has been opened many times and it is extremely difficult to open.
4. Glass stopper
There are very few wineries that use glass stoppers, of which German wines are the most popular. There will be no TCA pollution, and the opening will be smooth, but the cost should be higher than the cork.
5. Screw cap
Today, screw caps have become a very popular way to seal wines, especially in Australia and New Zealand. Many people think that the use of screw caps is cheap wine. This is actually a kind of prejudice. Many high-end wines in Australia will also use screw caps in large quantities. The screw cap has many advantages, such as excellent sealing performance, easy to open without using any tools, and the packaging cost is relatively affordable. Of course, many people have argued that “using cork and screw caps is better or worse?” But for now, it is still a controversial topic.
The wine stopper is made of oak plug, and the oak is a kind of cork. It is characterized by swelling with water, and the plug is made with better sealing. When the wine bottle is laid flat or the bottle is inclined downward, the wine is used. To moisten the cork, the tightly sewed air of the bottle will not enter. So there are decades of red wine for hundreds of years!
