Wine Food Pairings….cork, screw top, or?

Wine Food Pairings make most of us nervous just thinking about it, but wait, someone just threw a monkey wrench (or should I say corkscrew!) into the mix!
Many wineries, in fact almost 90 and 8% of the wines that are sealed with a cork has that delightful moldy, kind of like wet cardboard taste and smell? The cause of cork taint is a mystery and is supposed to be harmless, but who wants to drink it? In addition, what food do you "pair" it with? I don't think you'll find any wine food pairing chart giving advice on that!


The screw tops of today are highly engineered pieces of metal that seem to do the job of preserving wine quite nicely. Basically, you want the wine to stay in the bottle and to seal out the air so no oxidation occurs. We Americans will just have to "get over" our prejudices on screw tops.


OK, just when you think it's alright to unscrew a bottle of your favorite vino, I hear the sound of a POP…. But wait it's not a cork…it's a ZORK….what the heck is that you ask? Apparently, the Australians have been busily designing a new wine stopper. YIKES! It has the same airtight seal of a screw top and doesn't even require a corkscrew…..which you can't locate when you need it anyway! It is opened with just your hands and it easily goes back into the bottle to keep your wine fresh…….and guess what? It "POPS"! What more do you want?


Well, the WWF, formerly the Worldwide Fund for Nature, is lobbying the wine industry to continue with the cork stoppers, stating that the renewable source of cork, if not used will threaten one of the most important wildlife habitats. The environmentalists argue that the demise of the Mediterranean cork oak forests will endanger the Iberian lynx, the Barbary deer, the black vulture and the imperial Iberian eagle. "The cork oak forests could face an economic and environmental crisis unless we take action to secure their future now," said Rebecca May, WWF's forests campaigner. It is vital that the wine and cork industries maintain the market for cork stoppers and in turn help ensure the survival of the cork oak forests," she said.


The future should be interesting for the wine "sealing" industry….who would have thought that we, as wine consumers, would face such a serious dilemma? Cork, Zork or screw top…..CHEERS!

Denise Clarke has been passionate about wine food pairing for many years....