Corks Big Comeback

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Go into any wine store in Canada and you’ll see rank upon rank of bottles closed with metal screw top caps.

It’s a lingering sign of the massive switch from cork stoppers to synthetic stoppers that happened over the late 20th Century and accelerated in the first decade of this century.

At one point cork stoppers, mainly imported from Portugal, held 95 per cent of the market for wine closures.

But new technologies such as synthetic corks or sophisticated metal caps began eating into that dominance. And then the Great Taint Debate began.

About 15 years ago the use of cork stoppers fell off a statistical cliff face, driven by reports that a sizeable percentage of wine bottles were corked … or in technical terms, tainted with TCA.

This compound (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) is created when some fungi are treated with antimicrobial agents used in the processing of wood, including cork bark. TCA causes the cork to become moldy, which in turn ruins the wine.

Makers of caps and other alternative stoppers benefited mightily by the growing problem of cork taint, and in many countries like South Africa, New Zealand and Australia the use of corks has almost disappeared completely.

Today, only about 10 per cent of wines in Australia use cork stoppers.

In the massive US market, artificial corks and metal screw caps surged to take half the market by 2009.

For more than a decade the use of cork seemed to be in an inevitable, unstoppable decline. Companies like Amorim, the largest cork manufacturer in the world, saw their sales numbers and their stock prices plunge.

But over the last few years that’s changed. Cork is making a comeback.

In fact, Amorim’s share price soared by 600 per cent since 2009, and exports from Portugal have surpassed their peak of 15 years ago. Cork stopper exports hit a low point in 2009 at 458 million Euros, and have since rebounded to set a new export record at $592.5 million Euros.

“When you go back 12 or 15 years the forecast for cork was anything but optimistic,” says Carlos de Jesus, marketing director for Amorim. “Where we are today is a completely different territory from what most people thought possible then.”

So, given the constantly improving technology offered by competitors, why are wine producers switching back to the humble cork?

Part of that is due to marketing by the cork manufacturers, but it’s also due to some of cork’s undeniable advantages, and ongoing research to improve corks and reduce the incidents of cork taint.

In particular, a growing number of people are choosing cork for environmental reasons. Cork is a natural product harvested from trees, and is fully biodegradable. Considering many billions of bottles of wine are sold every year, plastic and metal caps actually create a significant amount of waste that either goes to the landfill, or must be recycled.

As well, Mediterranean cork forests are considered beneficial for the environment, reducing carbon in the air, and harbouring endangered species like the Iberian Eagle and the Barbary Deer.

But the bigger reason is research to find new and better ways to clean cork and eliminate TCA, meaning far fewer tainted bottles. Portugal alone invested more than 700 million Euros in research and development over the past decade, resulting in new production methods that have greatly reduced issues with TCA.

Amorim, for example, uses robots, lasers and ranks of chromatographic analysis machines to detect just a few parts of TCA per trillion. Very few tainted corks now make it through the new ‘ND Tech’ process.

Alan Marks of Scott Labs in West Kelowna says the tide has turned, thanks to better production methods and better Quality Control by distributors.

“We don’t take anything for granted,” says Marks. “We have our own quality control testing on the ground in Portugal, and we do it again here, so we double up on testing.

“Our goal is to be 100 per cent TCA free by 2020.”

Marks says BC is “a screwcap province” with producers here primarily using the metal caps. A few producers use all cork closures, and many others use cork for their higher end wines.

“There are pluses and minuses with any type of closure,” Marks says. “Screw caps are convenient, but cork is still the best if you’re planning on aging a quality wine.

Marks also points out that a few years ago a contaminated batch of metal caps caused thousands of bottles of wine to be ruined. “You can’t just point at cork,” he says. “Problems can come from any type of closure, and you also see TCA taint from things like wooden barrels or even the pallets the wine is placed on.”

The major wins for cork have been in Europe, China, and the United States. The US has bounced back to 60 per cent market share. China is going heavily cork as it’s seen as more prestigious, with exports to that nation soaring by 22 per cent in 2016 alone. Many French wineries are also switching back to cork from screw caps. Laroche Wines made headlines in 2005 when it adopted screw caps for all its Chablis, including the high-end Grand Cru, but last year the winery giant went back to ND Tech cork stoppers from Amorim for all its finer wines.

This has been driven by consumer choice. A study by Neilsen Scanning Statistics found for the top 100 premium wine brands in the US, cork stoppered wines saw a 42 per cent increase in sales between 2010 and 2016, compared to just 13 per cent for alternative closures. They also commanded 39 per cent higher median sales prices.

A similar study in Canada by the American Association of Wine Economists found similar results. They found Canadian consumers were willing to pay on average $1.69 more for cork finished wines compared to those using screw caps or synthetics.

While cork will never again monopolize the market, industry analysts are now predicting cork will maintain a powerful presence in the industry for decades to come.