Screw tops have been called into question as wine buffs found some bottles that smell of rotten eggs. From demijohns in rustic garages to the finest cellars, storing wine remains an unpredictable science - so what's the solution?
In good news for those who dislike tussling with corkscrews, screw-tops have been hailed as the answer to sealing off wine - cheap, hassle-free and a safe alternative to corks. They unscrewed a world of wine buying and storing snobbery.
But, amid a whiff of sulphur, the all-stopping properties of screw top wine bottles have been called into question.
Tasters at the International Wine Challenge, testing thousands of bottles of wine, found a small proportion - 2.2% of 9,000 bottles - smelt not of a pleasant bouquet of fruit and grasses, but of sulphur.
How to keep it?
The problem comes because the sulphides, used in wine as a preservative, are kept in by airtight screw tops as they break down into thiol - which gives the eggy smell. Corks, however, allow a certain amount of oxygen in to the bottle to neutralise them.
More than half of wine bottles sold in the UK each year now come with a screw cap. Many producers have switched in the past decade because of concerns about the reliability, and relative inconvenience, of cork.
Drinker
At wine-o-clock, does the seal on the bottle matter?
It is the latest twist in the unpredictable science of storing wine - a science that is especially important in a multi-billion industry, where investment in bottles to store is key alongside consumer sales.
So does the newly-sniffed out problem spell the end for screw caps and a search for something new?
Certainly not, says wine expert Malcolm Gluck, the future is still screw cap.
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