BIG CRYSTAL BALL
This year we will see real energy in the search for alternative wine bottle stoppers to natural cork in a race against Portugal's cork suppliers' own investment in methods of reducing the incidence of wine affected by cork taint (called 'wine taint' by the cork industry).
Wine drinkers and producers are nowadays much more aware of the effects of the guilty compound, TCA. Really badly tainted wines smell too horrid to contemplate even sipping, but far more insidious is the phenomenon of wines rendered a bit less expressive and fruity than they should be by lower levels of TCA. They will not be sent back by the purchaser, but they will almost certainly not be ordered again. Hence the urgent search for an alternative to a cylinder of bark from the cork oak Quercus suber.
Synthetic (plastic) corks have been tried and (so far) found wanting in elasticity, ecological correctness and effectiveness as a seal after a year or two. Screwcaps have gained ground substantially for unoaked white wines, especially in Australia and New Zealand, but there are fears that screwcaps may be just too airtight for seemly ageing of oaked wines of both colours – and besides, they are hardly easy on the eye.
Emerging on to the market more recently have been innovations such as Metacork, the cork-and-screwcap combo from California (surely the worst of both worlds), and the Vino-lok glass stopper (think old-fashioned pharmacy) from the German firm Alcoa used commercially for the first time in November by Becker of the Rheingau. More will surely follow.
LITTLE CRYSTAL BALL
Any producer tempted to add commercial flavourings to wines to make them more attractive to the market will surely be deterred by the very public storm cooked up in South Africa recently when the country's leading wine writer Michael Fridjhon accused unnamed producers of using such props, as reported in purple pages. Their use is illegal in all significant wine-producing countries but the difficulty of detection may have encouraged the odd downmarket corner-cutter to add a drop or two of Sauvignon Blanc or Cabernet Sauvignon essence in the past.