Global closures market
Keeping tabs on trends in the global closures market is tricky business. The OIV estimated global production in 2015 at 275 mhl. That’s more than 36 billion bottle-equivalents, but that top line number includes all formats – bag-in-box, tetrapak, pouches etc. Closure estimates are somewhere around the 20 billion mark.
Reduction – winemaker or closure?
It’s been a long time since the original 1999 AWRI study started identifying reduced (volatile sulphur) notes of rubber, flint, struck match under bottles closed with screwcap. Understanding of sulphide chemistry has come a way since then, so can we really justify the perpetuation of the idea that screwcaps cause reduction?
Cork or screwcap, screwcap or cork?
I recently came across a couple of tasty wines from the almost unknown top (closer to the source) / bottom (in the Massif Central) corner of the Loire valley. The wines were both bottles under cork and screwcap.
Reasons to choose stoppers
There are many reasons why producers select particular types of closures, and while quality is always high up the list in the mix of reasons, it’s not always the one that holds sway in the final reckoning.
Recycling cork stoppers
Recycling cork stoppers for use in the manufacture of non-stopper products, or for re-use in other programmes is beginning to get off the ground in a potentially meaningful way.
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified cork stoppers
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has been certifying Mediterranean cork forests since 2005. Certification means cork oak growers can supply to cork stopper manufacturers traceable cork planks from forests certified to adopt landscape-sustainable practices.
Branded closures
Intel has become one of the best know brands of computer chips, and our lives rely on that ‘invisible’ piece of technology. Just as wine relies completely on the closure, so should closure companies pursue the ‘Intel inside’ concept of quality perception?
Have perceptions of TCA improved in a decade?
Have the investment and new product development measures taken by cork manufacturers during the last decade to better control TCA (the chemical that causes musty, mouldy taint in wine had any real impact on our perceptions of cork as an effective stopper?
Cork stoppers – with extra membrane?
In the last decade businesses have been enticed alongside the cork industry, providing new barrier technologies to modify cork performance.
Airocide
Equipment developed in the 1990s by NASA to keep fruit and vegetables growing and healthy on the space station has been found to remove airborne TCA – trichloroanisole, the chemical that causes mouldy, musty taint in wine.
