Old topic New Topic Twist Off Caps

Off topic a touch. Was James Goode not someone who used to be on WLDG?

Jamie has gone professional, resigned his job and is now a full time wine writer.

He has several books under his belt and a weekly wine column in a national newspaper. He blogs daily at www.wineanorak.com which has recently won an award.

I am not dewy eyed about screw caps.

I like to see them on a bottle and where there's a choice between a wine with a screwcap or other closure I'll buy the screwcapped wine.

Screwcaps aren't perfect. I said earlier that 'No closure is ideal'. I've taken back a screwcapped bottle because the wine was faulty - the glass at the rim of the bottle was chipped so there wasn't an airtight seal. The chip wouldn't have affected a cork.

When I buy screwcapped wines I always check the cap for dents and damage and reject those bottles.

Screwcapped wines can be corked, TCA can come from the winemaking process as well as the cork, though I haven't had one so far and it wouldn't be just one bottle that was affected.

In a restaurant in the hands of a waiter its not easy to see if the bottle is being opened for the first time.

If I can't have screwcaps then DIAM is the next best closure. It hasn't got the ease of opening and resealing but I have never had a corked wine with DIAM. DIAM is excellent and if I see the word DIAM on the cork I'm happy. If I don't then its a cheap agglomorate closure.

I loathe plastic corks but the single wine I buy most of now has one - they changed from twin-tops two vintages ago. This closore has a hole through the closure with some sort of valve in it for oxygen transfer. Seems over engineered to me.

As for maturing wines for decades - I don't care now, its of only academic interest personally.

When I started wine drinking claret (red bordeaux) was pretty undrinkable when young and needed aging. But winemaking techniques have advanced and I'm wary if someone tells me that a wine needs to be kept for many years before drinking because I have the suspicion that it the wine is not pleasant now then when I open it many year sin the future and find it still undrinkable it'll be too late to take it back.

Not to say there isn't interest in seeing how wine develops and ages, but I think I've had many more wines that are too old than I've drunk too young.

Other closures:

Zork - the new smaller Zorks are not as unattractive as they were and offer advantages of clearly showing if wine has been opened before, easy to open and reseal.

Glass vinlock - on the negative side of indifferent.

As for Tetrapaks, cans, plastic bottles, BIB etc -- all good in their place. Which isn't on my dining room table.