an analysis by Joel B. Payne

Somewhere between 2.5 and 2.8 of the 17bn wine bottles sold this year will be under screw caps, according to the French daily newspaper Le Figaro, a number corroborated by Dr Olav Aargaard of Nomacorc, who has been following the transition from cork to alternative closures over the past five years. “We estimate that 35% of all bottles are currently sealed with alternative closures. As recently as 2000, 99% of the market was natural cork.”

Nomacorc sold 1.7bn closures in 2007 and expects to move 2bn this year, making it by far the largest producer of synthetic closures. In fact, their 2007 volume is more than twice that of the number two, three, and four combined. NuKorc is thought to be the largest in the following group, which together does another 2bn closures a year, bringing the number of alternative closures on bottles to approximately 6.5bn.

Another 30% of the some 20bn litres of wine sold each year is moved in bag-in-box, tetrapac, jug or aluminum tin, which means that bottles under cork now account for less than half of all wine moved.

In Europe, alternative closures have made their fastest inroads in the under €5 a bottle category, which according to Arend Heijbroek of Rabobank accounts for some 70% of the European market. Although the Burgundian shipper Boisset has even bottled a Chambertin that sells for €150 under screw cap, most European producers have not yet firmly embraced alternative closures for their higher priced wines. “The big advantage, though,” according to Jean-Claude Boisset, “is that every bottle tastes the same.”

In various parts of the New World, the situation looks vastly different, with 90% of all wines from New Zealand are now under screw cap. In Australia that figure is close to 60%. Not only whites, but also some of Australia’s icon reds are now being bottled with screw caps - and even Grange is being tested for alternative closures, according to chief winemaker Peter Gago.

In Europe, Greece, Austria and Switzerland, each of which use alternative closures for more than half of their bottlings, have led the fray, but others are following. Renaud Laroche, from the eponymous family in Chablis, claims that that his company now closes 60% of its 8.2m bottles with screw caps, telling Figaro, that “we’ve had whole charges with cork that have gone bad.”

Even the famed German producer Egon Müller, known for his fine Riesling from the Scharzhofberg vineyard on the Saar admits to experimenting with screw caps, but when asked when he would release his first auslese under alternative closure, he responded laconically, “one week after Château Latour".