Book Notes: Taber – To Cork or Not To Cork (2007)

Title	To Cork or Not To Cork – Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle
Author	George M. Taber
Publisher	Scribner
Date	October 9, 2007
ISBN	978-0743299343; 978-0743299350 (paperback); 978-1416571490 (ebook)
Pages	288
Awards	Jane Grigson Award (IACP); finalist, James Beard Foundation Award – Wine & Spirits (finalist); André Simon Award (finalist)
Synopsis	The closure debate 1981–2007: TCA, the cork industry’s response, and the rise of screwcap, synthetic and glass alternatives. 24 chapters, each centred on one actor. No closure is declared the winner.

About the Author

George McCaffrey Taber (b. 25 May 1942). Reporter and editor at Time for 21 years; Paris bureau 1973–76. The only journalist present at the Judgment of Paris, 24 May 1976; his four-paragraph report ran in the 7 June 1976 issue.

Other books

Judgment of Paris – California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine (2005)
In Search of Bacchus – Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism (2009)
A Toast to Bargain Wines (2011)
Chasing Gold (2014)

About the Book

The narrative opens at the David Bruce Winery in California, where corked bottles introduce the central problem. Cork’s critics argue that a 3–5% failure rate would put Toyota or IBM out of business. From there Taber traces four centuries of cork’s near-monopoly and the disruption that followed Hans Tanner’s identification of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA) in 1981: an expert taster detects TCA at 1 part per trillion, the average consumer at about 5.

Twenty-four chapters, each centred on one actor or development: the biology and manufacture of cork; Portugal’s decade of quality failures; the French industry’s reluctance to acknowledge TCA; screwcap adoption in Australia and New Zealand; synthetic closures (Supreme Corq and successors); Randall Grahm’s funeral for the cork; Amorim’s reform and screening programme; oxygen transmission and ageing; a closure market of about 20 billion units a year. The conclusion finds no perfect closure and leaves the debate open.

Reviews and Interviews

Chapters

1. Nature’s Nearly Perfect Product

Cork under the microscope; amphorae; cork and glass in England; the corkscrew patent of 1795. In Micrographia (1665), Observation XVIII, Robert Hooke cut a slice of cork, saw a honeycomb of pores, and named them “cells” after the rooms of a monastery — the word biology still uses.

Science History Institute – Hooke’s cork plate, 1665

Now. The idea that cork “breathes” is rejected: a sound cork releases the oxygen dissolved in its own structure during the first months after bottling, then admits a near-negligible ingress, and holds its seal for around 50 years (Goode, 2025).

2. The Making of a Cork

First industrial cork company 1750; Portugal; the Whistler tree.

Now. Amorim Cork sells more than 6 billion stoppers a year in 90 countries; but sales are down and still-wine stoppers the weakest product line, against a wine market in structural decline.

Cork harvesting – Amorim Cork Solutions

Video – From Bark to Bottle (2025)

3. Science in the Service of Wine

Pasteur; phylloxera; Geisenheim (1872), Bordeaux (1880), Davis (1880). Hans Tanner’s team identifies TCA by GC-MS in 1981 and publishes in 1982; their analogy for the threshold was two sugar cubes sweetening Lake Constance.

Now. TCA is held responsible for 50–80% of musty-defect cases; 2–5% of world wine is estimated corked at a cost above US$1 billion a year (Zhou et al., 2024); the sensory threshold is put at 1.4 ng/L in wine and 0.03 ng/L in dealcoholised wine (Vinventions, 2025); and a portable electronic nose classified sparkling wines above 2 ng/L with 88% accuracy (2025).

4. The Long Search for an Alternative

Screwcap invention; Stelvin; Riunite 1974–2000; Australia 1976.

Now. Stelvin’s owner Amcor marked the closure’s 60th anniversary in 2024 with the claim that one bottle in three worldwide is screwcapped, while the AWRI trial of 1999 — one Clare Semillon under 14 closures — was halted after three years because the results were clear-cut and several closures had already left the market.

5. A Disastrous Decade for Portuguese Cork

Post-revolution nationalisations; demand rising without competition.

Now. Portuguese cork exports reached a record €1.232 billion in 2023, stoppers making up about 73% of the total; APCOR’s 200-plus member companies account for around 80% of national production and 85% of exports, and Portugal holds 34% of the world’s cork-oak forest and about half of world cork production.

How millions of wine corks are made every day – Business Insider

6. Rise of Australia

Research centre shifts from UC Davis to the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI); ETS Labs in California.

Now. Australian Grape & Wine puts 98% of Australian wine under screwcap (2023), and the Clare Valley marked 20 years of screwcapped Riesling with 2002/2012/2022 comparative tastings in 2022.

7. The French Cover-Up

Pascal Chatonnet — two doctorates from Bordeaux University, founder of the Excell laboratory, consultant winemaker, family estates in Lalande-de-Pomerol.

8. Supreme Corq Breaks the Monopoly

Injection-moulded synthetic, Kent, Washington; founded 1992; about 40% of the synthetic market at its peak.

Now. Supreme Corq folded early in 2011, after NuKorc (2010) and the sale of Neocork (2010), leaving the co-extruded Nomacorc — launched 1999, parent Vinventions since — as effectively the synthetic category.

9. From Perfect Cork to Perfect Disaster

Sabaté’s Altec; the Oeneo rescue.

Now. Diam Bouchage (Oeneo) has applied its Diamant supercritical-CO₂ process to every product since 2004 with a releasable-TCA guarantee of ≤0.3 ng/L, added the cork-clad Diam Collection in 2025 and the LiOX closure in 2026, which replaces oxygen in the cork cells with CO₂ and halves oxygen intake over the first 200 days; in Washington State DIAM-type closures rose from 6% of wines reviewed in 2016 to 27% in 2021.

10. A New Generation at Amorim Makes Big Changes

Now. Amorim’s NDtech (2016, €12 m and six years of R&D) screens every natural cork by fast gas chromatography and rejects any above 0.5 ng/L releasable TCA; Naturity (thermal desorption, natural cork) and Xpür (supercritical CO₂, micro-agglomerates, to 0.3 ng/L) delivered the non-detectable-TCA target the company had set for 2020; and the twist-off Helix cork was relaunched in December 2025 for young, organic and no/low wines.

11. California Looks for a High-Tech Solution

The Cork Quality Council (founded 1991, now the Natural Cork Council) and ETS Labs develop a 1-ppt GC-MS screen; Eric Hervé.

Now. The Council’s GC-MS audits averaged 3% tainted corks to September 2021 and 1% by the first quarter of 2023, while critic Sean Sullivan’s tally of natural-cork bottles opened for review ran at 3–6% tainted over 2013–22, with a six-year average of 4.13% and 3.05% in 2021.

12. Australia Blazes New Paths

Fourteen Clare Valley producers release their 2000 Rieslings under screwcap; Jeffrey Grosset.

Now. Andrew Mitchell of Clare had already bottled half his first 1977 Riesling under screwcap and half under cork, and moved everything to screwcap in 2000; the 20-year tastings are in chapter 6.

13. PlumpJack Makes a Bold Gamble

1997 Reserve Cabernet, half under screwcap, US$135.

Now. Farr Vintners’ 2024 blind comparison of 25 mature wines bottled under both closures produced no consistent winner, screwcap preferred for some wines and cork for others, with experienced tasters disagreeing among themselves.

14. New Zealand’s Rebel with a Cause

Michael Brajkovich (Kumeu River); the New Zealand Screwcap Wine Seal Initiative, 2001.

Now. New Zealand Winegrowers puts 90% of the country’s wine under screwcap; Guala Closures, the largest aluminium-closure maker, puts it at 99% (2024).

15. Funeral for the Cork

Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon, 2 October 2002, Grand Central Terminal, New York: a coffin holding a cork corpse named Thierry Bouchon (1585–2002), an all-black dinner after Huysmans’ À rebours, 33 Bonny Doon wines, and a eulogy by Jancis Robinson.

16. Back to the Future with a Glass Solution

Karl Matheis; Alcoa; Vino-Lok.

Now. Vinolok of Jablonec nad Nisou (founded 2003–04, acquired by Preciosa in 2019, about 150 staff) seals with a polymer disc rather than glass on glass; a three-year Affinity Labs trial found wine evolution comparable to cork and screwcap references, and Henschke bottles Hill of Grace under it.

17. The Bottle That Wears a Crown

Stainlesscap / Edelstahlverschluss; Weingut Peter Jakob Kühn; Weingut Querbach.

18. Trouble in the Cellar at Hanzell

Systemic TCA, not corks: 2000 Chardonnay 2.6 ppt, 2001 3.2 ppt (ETS Labs, 2003); cause traced to decades of chlorine sanitation in a 50-year-old cellar. Sales suspended; new winery and cave built; remediation ≥US$200,000; 2003 vintage on clear.

19. The Problem of Reduction

Alan Limmer (Stonecroft, Gimblett Gravels; PhD chemist) argued that the near-impermeable tin/saran-lined screwcap encourages post-bottling sulfide (thiol) accumulation where cork’s small permeability discourages it; he moved his own wines to Diam.

Now. AWRI’s follow-up trial found no causal link between SO₂ level at bottling and reductive ratings under screwcap; Goode (2025) records that tin/saran liners keep wine freshest at the cost of slight rubber or struck-match reduction while saranex liners admit more oxygen; and a 2025 study of red wines over three years found closure type measurably shaping the volatile profile.

20. France Remains Hesitant

At the time of writing fewer than 4% of French wines carried a screwcap.

Now. The figures are contested: the Fédération française du liège counts 2.32 billion of the 3.04 billion bottles filled in France in 2019–20 under natural or technical cork (over 75%), with plastic at 12% and screwcap around 10%, whereas Vinventions claims screwcap leads at 40% ahead of technical cork 36%, synthetic 14% and natural cork 10%. Two early adopters have moved back: André Lurton, first to put classified Bordeaux whites under screwcap in 2004, reverted to cork in 2015 citing trade resistance, and Domaine Laroche, all-screwcap from the 2003 vintage, ships its 2023 grands crus under natural cork.

21. American Experiments with Closures

Ridge (“for now, Ridge will stay with cork”); Chalone; Calera’s 2002 Mt Harlan Viognier split trial and later move of high-volume wines to Vino-Seal; Hogue Cellars’ 2001–03 and 2005–10 studies and conversion to Saranex-lined screwcap.

Now. In Washington State, alternative closures went from under a quarter of wines reviewed in 2016 to 46% in 2021, almost all of the gain coming from DIAM-type corks while screwcap, Nomacorc and glass stayed flat.

22. On the American Front Lines

The US was expected to become the world’s largest wine market; it did in 2013.

Now. World consumption fell to 208 mhl in 2025 (−2.7%, and −14% since 2018), with the US still first at 31.9 mhl (−4.3%) ahead of France 22.0, Italy 20.2 and Germany 17.8; production was 227 mhl, exports 94.8 mhl worth €33.8 bn, and US imports €5.5 bn (−12%).

23. The Penfolds Recorking Clinic

Launched 1991, inspired by Max Schubert re-corking old Grange for friends; run by chief winemaker Peter Gago.

Penfolds Recorking Clinic with Peter Gago – Jamie Goode

Now. More than 250,000 bottles have been assessed since 1991; eligibility is cork-sealed Penfolds reds of 15 years or more never previously re-corked, and 2025 clinics ran across Australia from Sydney and returned to Hong Kong on 22–23 August for the first time since 2017.

24. Battle for the Wine Bottle

Amorim, Nomacorc, screwcap and glass; New Zealand from 0 to 95% screwcap by 2006.

Now. Screwcap accounts for one bottle in three worldwide by Amcor’s count (2024); Vinventions launched Nomacorc nolow for no/low-alcohol wine (0.7 mg oxygen ingress in year one) in late 2025 alongside its net-zero-carbon Green Line and 50%-recycled Blue Line; and a 2025 ANSES study found wines under cork carried 0–5 microplastic particles per litre, painted metal caps being the main source of contamination in glass-bottled drinks. No independent global share by closure type for 2025 was located; market-report percentages (cork 45–59%) are unaudited.

Conclusion and Epilogue

Taber’s conclusion: the cork monopoly harmed consumers, winemakers and producers alike, and competition was the corrective. Epilogue: natural cork held about 80% of closures in 2004 and about 66% by 2008.

Now. Closure choice is now treated as a stylistic winemaking decision rather than fault avoidance — natural cork for long ageing, technical cork as the middle ground, screwcap for consistency (Goode, 2025) — and tainted bottles, though far fewer, are not zero (Sullivan – Wine Enthusiast, 2023: 3.05% of natural-cork bottles in 2021).

Book Notes: George M. Taber – To Cork or Not To Cork (2007)

About the Author

About the Book

Reviews and Interviews