Italy allows use of screwcap – with compromises

30th October, 2012 by Rupert Millar

Slideshow - 0 pages

Slideshow

The Italian Ministry of Agriculture has amended its decree of July 1993 to allow some – but crucially not all – DOCG wines to be bottled under screwcap.

However, the amendment does not stretch to wines that include a sub-zone or the name of a vineyard on the label.

The change in the law comes after a lengthy debate that was started in October 2006 following the arrival of a letter from David Gleave MW, managing director of Liberty Wines, asking for a change in the law that only allowed cork to be used as a closure for DOCG wines.

The new decree was ratified on 13 August this year but in a statement Gleave said that it did not go far enough, calling it a “crass….

Share7

Tweet

Pin

Share4

Continue reading

Get unlimited access to The Drinks Business, from just £10.75 per month

Join The Drinks Business
Already a subscriber? Login

Slideshow - 0 pages

Slideshow

Featured in the latest newsletter from db

click here to sign up

Sake special: Sake and its relationship with yeast

The brands and trends shaping the low- and no-alcohol category

Duckhorn prepares for stock market listing

Wines of Argentina launches new innovation programme

30 pubs and restaurants closing every day in UK with worse to come

Seven reasons to drink Austrian wine

New trade body for Welsh pubs launched on St David’s Day

You can now travel through Mexico on an all-you-can-drink Tequila train

Morrisons plans 300 more convenience stores as part of McColl deal

Bosman launches ‘Nero’ – first South African wine made from Sicilian Nero d’Avola

17th century sake bottle bought for £5 valued at £500

Jordi Roca opens chocolate shop in Hong Kong

5 Responses to “Italy allows use of screwcap – with compromises”

1. federica says:

   October 30, 2012 at 1:05 pm

   Why insist so much to allow screwcaps in the first place?
   The natural cork not only is a perfectly good way of sealing bottles, but it’s also the best solution for aging great wines. (Imagine a vintage Barolo in 20 years time with a screwcap??)
   As an Italian living in London i only buy bottles of wine with a cork (wherever they might be from). There is an element of craftsmanship, ritual and a romantic / old-school feel to corks, that screwcaps will never be able to replace.
   ILeave the screwcaps to new world wines?

   Reply
   • Marcello Fabretti says:

     October 31, 2012 at 4:54 am

     Well, Federica, so winemakers the world over have been moving to Stelvin closures en masse for 20 years now and I suppose they’ve done it based on absolutely no reason at all, right?…

     You say, “imagine a Barolo vintage Barolo in 20 years time with a screwcap”. Tell you what, if I had a bottle of Barolo that I’d carefully cellared for 20 years and opened it with as much flourish and ritual that you seem to admire, only to find that it’s corked or randomly oxidised, I’d be pretty pissed off. Now that would be fine if I were only paying peanuts for the wine and had multiple bottles to pick from and could return the spoiled wine to the original distributor. But Barolo ain’t cheap, Sunshine, and I don’t want to waste time and money on something that could spoil THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN. So yeah, if I had a Barolo under screwcap I would breath a sigh of relief.

     Anyone who bemoans the loss of ritual in using a bottle opener to extract a piece of bark from a bottle is an idiot and shouldn’t even be allowed to comment on the issue. Stelvins make sense. I wouldn’t buy a bottle of milk or coke or OJ sealed with a piece of bark, so why should I accept it in wine?

     Cork causes more problems than it solves. And yeah, it’s awesome in so far as it’s environmentally sustainable and all that blah mcblah, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t do it’s job right. Fact. And expecting the consumer, retailers, distributors and winemakers to take the hit for an innately faulty closure because of sentimental and wishy-washy spiritual reasons, is ridiculous.

     So Fede’, the fact that you only stick to wines under cork is your own valid choice, but not one based in logic or quality based appreciation. Just ignorance, really.

     Reply
   • Ben Grosvenor says:

     October 31, 2012 at 10:47 am

     Screw-caps are a much safer way of trying to eliminate TCA from wine. I love a cork, but I HATE a corked wine – until there are ways of ensuring that TCA can be removed from cork closures, screw-caps are surely the way forward. I would have no objection to opening a 20 year old Barolo with a screw-cap – rather that than open it after having waited 20 years to find it corked. As for leaving screw-caps to new world wines – what is that supposed to mean!? Implication that new world wines are inferior? Agree with David Gleave, this is positive, but does not go far enough.

     Reply
2. Carlo Pandian says:

   October 31, 2012 at 6:03 pm

   More screwcaos means less Cork Oak to be cut for our bottles. However, will the quality be compromised from this?

   Reply
   • Nick says:

     November 5, 2012 at 10:16 am

     Nowadays many wines don’t even use natural cork- they have moved towards synthetic corks (see normacorc). So the whole arguement about environmental sustainability goes out the window!

     Reply