[Tapper]

dktorode, on 03 August 2010 - 12:57 PM, said:

Tapper, on 03 August 2010 - 12:52 PM, said:

dktorode, on 03 August 2010 - 12:46 PM, said:

MTS, on 03 August 2010 - 12:23 PM, said:

A wine bottle with a screw cap?

Screw caps are better for the wine than any form of cork.

aye, but it is non-traditional.

So you would drink corked wine simply because of tradition?
True, there is no drama in unscrewing a bottle of wine.
But 1 in 10 bottles of wine with corks are 'corked' by the time its on the store shelves, talk about suffering for your fashion.
most people cant even tell if a wine is corked and simply think its a "terrible wine"

meh...

Well, that is not so much the point I wished to make.
There are after all tell tale signs of a wine being corked, as well, if you know what to look for.

What I wanted to say, was: screw caps are a lot cheaper than corks.

As such, low quality wines were the first to adopt screw caps (ok, the real dregs of the barrel were sold in cartons before that, or with fake plastic corks). So, I didn't buy those and associated screw caps with shitty wine.
These days though, I can get €12,- to €15,- euro/ bottle wines with screw caps, so I have to adjust my PoV.

And rapiers... meh, they are overrated. Sabres, on the other hand...

[cerveza_fiesta]

This was on CBC the other day.

The screwcaps are indeed better for wine, as they have a much much lower failure rate than either natural or synthetic (rubber) corks.

Also cork trees are getting rarer and needlessly using natural cork for wine bottles is straining a scarce resource.

Plus they are less expensive to apply to a wine bottle when you get into heavy production

I've noticed a switch by a number of wineries (yes even some reputable ones with good wine) to screw caps for all their products, from the $8/bottle to the $200/bottle stuff. By no means a representative cross section...just what I see in the booze store around here.

[Ember]

Yep, I have also noticed that a number of wineries are switching to screw caps. I like it personally, because it makes it easier for me to drink good wine in public. Kidding. Maybe.

[Macros]

screw top wine helps my classy look immeasurably

[cerveza_fiesta]

That's what the CBC thing was saying too...

The screw cap is the single most "cheapening" thing you do to a bottle of wine. No doubt due to its association with terrible cheap wines in the past.

So wineries are starting to market it as a green thing. That way you defeat the stereotype while making yourself look like a responsible company and saving yourself a pile of money in production. All in all a good combination if you think about it in a strict business sense.

I imagine we'll see more wineries jump on the bandwagon as time goes on. Enviro marketing has the added benefit of making "non-enviro" companies not using the enviro-friendly techniques look worse...so you not only boost your reputation, you decrease your competitors'.

[Slow Ben]

I thought wine came in a box?

[D'rek]

Slow Ben, on 03 August 2010 - 07:11 PM, said:

I thought wine came in a box?

And beer comes in bathtubs!

[Salt-Man Z]

D, on 03 August 2010 - 08:08 PM, said:

Slow Ben, on 03 August 2010 - 07:11 PM, said:

I thought wine came in a box?

And beer comes in bathtubs!

And I --


...

On second thought, let's not go that route.

[Morgoth]

Thelomen Toblerone, on 01 August 2010 - 11:39 PM, said:

It has come to my attention that it is in fact the norm for beer bottles in America to have screw off style tops - so you can open them with your hands.

Now, this whole screw top phenomenon came as a shock to me the first time I discovered such things existed. I recall I'd already opened about 5 of the buggers with a bottle opener, and then was so amazed that I ran around showing people and even sent a multitude of texts out to people I knew.

This was a few years ago now, and ever since, these scre top bottles have remained an exciting rarity for me.

But now I'm told you yanks have them as a matter of course. And I want to know why. Why that is, we don't have them here?

It's always the same, every time I want to open a beer I have to go grab a bottle opener. Trouble is, I always forget where I've left them all, and so end up (particulalry in the latter stages of the evening) wandering around looking everywhere for one and then spend the next fortnight finding them all over the house. So if these screw ones exist, and are popular elsewhere, then why the FUCK am I rummaging around like a savage for a bottle opener?!?!

I'm sickened. SICKENED. My country may not be the power it once was, but I didn't think we'd fallen to such depths, such depraved levels of backwardness. Is it that they somehow make the beer taste bad? Is that why we don't use them? Someone please explain this to me.

Ignoring the entirety of this thread: Why should we import silly american nonsense just because you're too much of a girl to be able to open your own bloody beer?

[Anomander]

I'm very used to the screw top beers as well, it was a bitch of a time in England where everything requires a bottle opener. Learning to open a beer using a lighter has become a priority.

[Dag]

Tapper, on 03 August 2010 - 01:35 PM, said:

Well, that is not so much the point I wished to make.
There are after all tell tale signs of a wine being corked, as well, if you know what to look for.

What I wanted to say, was: screw caps are a lot cheaper than corks.

As such, low quality wines were the first to adopt screw caps (ok, the real dregs of the barrel were sold in cartons before that, or with fake plastic corks). So, I didn't buy those and associated screw caps with shitty wine.
These days though, I can get €12,- to €15,- euro/ bottle wines with screw caps, so I have to adjust my PoV.

I just wanted to add that I find it funny (and sometimes frustrating) how difficult it is to change the attitudes regarding the screw caps on wine bottles. Austria is famous for its wine poduction, and beside sweets, the most common present I bring to people when I'm visiting them abroad is wine. Now, in Austria, after some embarrassing scandals related to wine a couple of decades ago, there was a huge reform of regulations concerning the quality of wine and the wine packaging (a fact that makes many wine-fans in this country claim that those scandals were actually the best thing that ever happened to the Austrian wine industry). In the frame of those reforms, many top Austrian wineries introduced screw caps as a standard way before it became "in" in other countries. That means, when I buy wine as a present - a good, more expencive one - it will most probably come with a screw cap.

I never really thought about it (I was simply used to it) until one day someone told me that the person in another coutry whom I brought a botle of wine as a present complained that the wine I bring is always "cheap" - because it has a screw cap instead of cork. First I was quite pissed off, but then I realized that many people still judge the quality and estimate the price of wine by the bottle design, and that this (IMO quite misinformed) attitude will not change so quickly..

This post has been edited by Dag: 05 August 2010 - 08:28 PM

[Tapper]

Dag, on 05 August 2010 - 06:55 AM, said:

Tapper, on 03 August 2010 - 01:35 PM, said:

Well, that is not so much the point I wished to make.
There are after all tell tale signs of a wine being corked, as well, if you know what to look for.

What I wanted to say, was: screw caps are a lot cheaper than corks.

As such, low quality wines were the first to adopt screw caps (ok, the real dregs of the barrel were sold in cartons before that, or with fake plastic corks). So, I didn't buy those and associated screw caps with shitty wine.
These days though, I can get €12,- to €15,- euro/ bottle wines with screw caps, so I have to adjust my PoV.

I just wanted to add that I find it funny (and sometimes frustrating) how difficult it is to change the attitudes regarding the screw caps on wine bottles. Austria is famous for its wine poduction, and beside sweets, the most common present I bring to people when I'm visiting them abroad is wine. Now, in Austria, after some embarrassing scandals related to wine a couple of decades ago, there was a huge reform of regulations concerning the quality of wine and the wine packaging (a fact that makes many wine-fans in this country claim that those scandals were actually the best thing that ever happened to the Austrian wine industry). In the frame of those reforms, many top Austrian wineries introduced screw caps as a standard way before it became "in" in other countries. That means, when I buy wine as a present - a good, more expencive one - it will most probably come with a screw cap.

I never really thought about it (I was simply used to it) until one day someone told me that the person in another coutry whom I brought a botle of wine as a present complained that the wine I bring is always "cheap" - because it has a screw cap instead of cork. First I was quite pissed off, but then I realized that many people still judge the quality and estimate the price of wine by the bottle design, and that this (IMO quite misinformed) attitude will not change so quickly..

Well, as I said, I've come around to drinking screw capped wine, so all's fine and dandy, now, and I guess others come around, too - but a few years ago when I was just a poor student, screw capped wine (usually spanish or french) equated a bad headache and equally bad taste in the mouth the next day, regardless of quantity consumed

EDIT: didn't know about the austrians capping their wine that way for a few decades

This post has been edited by Tapper: 06 August 2010 - 09:08 AM

[MTS]

My own experience with screw-capped wine is exactly that. From what I've drank it's only slightly better than drinking cheap cask wine in terms of hangovers.

[alt146]

About 3, maybe four years ago all the wine that I drink anyway switched over from cork to screw top, so I don't really have a problem with screw-cap wine. Granted it was always wine from near the lower end of the price range, but still pretty tasty. Now that I can afford slightly more expensive wine, I didn't really notice that they had switched to screw caps too.

[Dag]

Tapper, on 06 August 2010 - 09:08 AM, said:

EDIT: didn't know about the austrians capping their wine that way for a few decades

No, I am sorry if that came over a bit unclear: The diethylene glycol wine scandal happened in 1985, so a bit over 2 decades ago. But it had far reaching consequences on the whole wine industry and it took the production and exports years to recover. So during those years of struggle the wineries were doing more intense work on re-defining their brands and were more open to experimenting with new forms of cost-saving packaging. That's why I meant Austria started with the switch pretty early compared to most other European countries (except maybe Germany, which was also partially hit by the same scandal) and it's for the past decade or so that the percentage of quality wines (primarily white wines) with screw caps in Austria has been growing steadily.

This post has been edited by Dag: 08 August 2010 - 09:39 PM

[Thelomen Toblerone]

The day they do dcrew top champagne is the day I die inside.

[Anomander]

The whole point of champagne is popping the cork so I can't see them doing away with it.

[Traveller]

I thought it was fairly common knowledge that a screw cap seal on wine is just as effective, if not better (at preserving the wine), than a cork. It's just wine-snobbery to complain about it.. more and more decent wines use 'em now. Obviously, if you put a screwcap on cheap wine, the wine is still going to be cheap, but that's nothing to do with what's holding it in the bottle.

The plastic corks are a bit shit, as they're not so easy to get out, but at least they don't break in half!

[Slow Ben]

Just an fyi. lf you lose/and or too drunk to find your corkscrew. a screw, a drill and a hammer can get the job done.

This post has been edited by Slow Ben: 09 August 2010 - 02:23 PM

[Macros]

no need for the drill, just a decent thread, say a 10 screwdriver and a hammer