Wine Trends of the Last 25 Years

Trend #3: Screw Caps

Trend #2 can be viewed here…

Screw caps have become one of the most debated innovations in modern winemaking, challenging the traditional dominance of natural cork closures.

Screw closures for inexpensive wines had existed for quite some time. But it took a group of frustrated Australian winemakers—led by the legendary Riesling producer Jeffrey Grosset—who were tired of seeing their wines ruined by natural cork, to push forward the idea that vintage wines—and, in fact, all wines—could benefit from screw caps.

Timeline

🔹 Background (before the mid-1990s)

Screw caps had existed for decades, primarily in the form of the Stelvin system, developed in France in the 1960s. However, until the 1990s they were associated with cheap wines, lacked reliable liners, and were not considered suitable for age-worthy bottles.

At this stage, this was not yet a trend, but rather a background technology without significant interest from winemakers.

🔥 Trend emergence: late 1990s–early 2000s (≈ 1999–2003)

This marks the beginning of a conscious and ideological shift. Screw caps began to be used not for cost-saving reasons, but as a statement of quality.

The discussion moved beyond mass-market wines to serious, often age-worthy wines. Winemakers began speaking publicly about the problem of cork taint.

The epicenter was Australia, and the key figure was Jeffrey Grosset. His transition to screw caps for Riesling in the late 1990s became a symbolic starting point: no longer an experiment, but a principled decision.

📈 Phase of mass adoption: 2003–2010

This was no longer a niche debate, but a full-fledged trend.

Australia and New Zealand embraced screw caps at a national level. By the end of the 2000s, the majority of wines—including premium ones—were bottled under screw cap.

Long-term aging studies began to appear. The market started to perceive screw caps as the norm rather than a challenge.

🌍 Global expansion and normalization: 2010–2020

During this period, screw caps became widely used in the United States, Germany, Austria, and Chile.

The rigid association of “screw cap = cheap wine” disappeared. Wines under screw caps began appearing in fine dining restaurants.

The discussion shifted from “Should we use it?” to “For which styles and why?”

👉 Important: in traditional regions (Bordeaux, Burgundy, Italy), the trend existed but did not become dominant.

🚀 From 2020 to the present and beyond

The trend is not complete. Screw caps are no longer an innovation, but an infrastructure choice.

The discussion has moved toward oxygen management, wine stability, and aging behavior.

A new generation of consumers no longer perceives screw caps as a compromise.

👉 The screw cap trend began at the turn of the 1990s–2000s, reached mass adoption in 2003–2010, and will continue well beyond 2025.
This is a point of no return.

What is TCA and why it changed the wine world

TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) is the compound responsible for cork taint. Even in microscopic concentrations, it gives wine aromas of wet cardboard, mold, and damp cellar, suppressing the wine’s character and making it flat and muted.

TCA is not dangerous to health—but it completely destroys the pleasure of wine.

It forms when natural phenols (often in cork bark) react with chlorine-containing compounds under the influence of microorganisms (fungi). Sources may include natural cork, wooden surfaces, treated materials, or even the winery environment.

Only in the 1980s did chemists and enologists clearly identify TCA as the source of the defect. At that time, cork taint affected an estimated 5–10% of bottles—a catastrophic figure for wines intended for aging and precise expression of terroir.

This discovery was a turning point: cork taint was no longer random—it was systemic.

TCA did not spoil wine—it destroyed the illusion that natural cork was always reliable

Two Europes—two closure strategies

Classic and historical wine regions

► Europe was not defending cork—it was defending a value model

For Bordeaux and Burgundy, wine is not just a product, but an asset—with history, auctions, collections, and investment value.

In this system, a natural cork is a visual and tactile code of fine wine. Screw caps disrupt that code.

The external identity (bottle shape, label, closure) must remain consistent over decades. Any radical change is perceived as a risk to the secondary market. For these regions, it matters not only how a wine ages, but also how it is perceived by the market in 10, 20, or 50 years.

In this context, screw caps long appeared as a risk to liquidity rather than a technological improvement.

For Bordeaux and Burgundy, the use of traditional cork is a way of protecting symbolic capital—a matter of identity and market trust

► Appellation systems are institutionally conservative

AOC/PDO systems reinforce continuity and are cautious toward changes not validated by generations.

► Cork = ritual, and Europe sells ritual

In Europe, not only taste is sold, but the gesture: the corkscrew, the inspection of the cork, the sound of extraction, the pause before tasting. For fine dining wines, this ritual is part of the experience and tradition—especially in restaurants. A screw cap removes this sense of theater, and for Europe, that means losing an element of cultural value.

Even if, within this system, the screw cap solves a problem of quality, it creates a problem of perception—and for these regions, perception matters more.

► The economics and geography of cork

Southern Europe—Portugal, Spain, southern France—is the center of cork production.

Cork is a domestic resource, jobs, exports, influence.

Support for cork is also an economic and political decision, even if rarely stated openly.

Lobbying existed—but in a soft form:

• narratives of “naturalness”
• emphasis on tradition and culture
• funding of favorable research
• marketing linking cork with fine wine

In other words, this was lobbying through meaning, not through regulation.

Cork did not create European conservatism—it integrated into it

► Europe chose to “fix cork,” not replace it

Faced with screw caps, the cork industry invested in:

• better raw material selection
• improved cleaning processes
• engineered corks with controlled oxygen transmission

This allowed them to say:
— We solved the problem without destroying tradition; we chose evolution over revolution, preserving the symbol while eliminating uncertainty.

For Bordeaux and Burgundy, this was the ideal compromise: visually and symbolically, everything remained the same; technological risks were reduced; and the myth of wine “breathing” was transformed—but not abandoned.

► Europe never rejected the use of screw caps—it rejected their universality.

👉 Europe does not consider screw caps to be inferior. It considers them unsuitable for its system of values, as such closures call into question the very idea of “great wine.” In the historic wine regions of the continent, traditional cork remains the standard—even if it is no longer always natural.

This is not backwardness, but a conscious refusal to accept that a technological solution must be universal

Germany & Austria: technological pragmatism

Germany and Austria took a different approach. Here, aromatic varieties and wines that are sensitive to oxidation are highly prized; precision, purity and consistency of style are valued; there is less reliance on the auction and investment markets; and reputation is built on quality in the glass, rather than on ritual.

Screw caps were seen as a tool of control. They preserved freshness, reduced bottle variation, and aligned with consumer expectations. In these countries, high quality has never been rigidly associated with the cork as a symbol—which is why the transition took place without any cultural friction.

If Bordeaux and Burgundy protected the form of great wine, Germany and Austria protected its content.

Why the trend started in Australia & New Zealand?

► Minimal cultural baggage → maximum freedom

In Australia and New Zealand, there was no long-standing association between “great wine” and “natural cork”; there was no investment boom in fine wine in the European sense; and consumers did not regard the ritual of opening a bottle as an essential part of the experience of drinking wine.

This gave winemakers the freedom to say:

— If a technology works better, we’ll use it.

► Export geography amplified the cork problem

Australia and its neighbor were export-driven from the very beginning: long sea shipments, sharp temperature fluctuations, and extended storage before sale. Under such conditions, cork-related defects appeared more frequently and with greater impact; a spoiled bottle meant losing not only the wine, but also reputation in distant markets.

Screw caps dramatically reduced these risks—the economic argument was clear.

► Wine styles sensitive to defects

The key wine styles of the region are aromatic whites and varieties where purity and precision define quality. For such wines, cork taint completely destroys the aroma, while oxidation quickly makes the wine flat.

Screw caps provided exactly what these styles required: purity and consistency.

► Absence of a domestic cork industry

Unlike Southern Europe, Australia and New Zealand had no economic dependence on cork and no internal conflict of interest. This removed another invisible barrier: the transition did not mean damaging a domestic industry.

► A culture of trust in technology

Winemaking in these countries developed in the scientific era: with university-based enology programs, close ties to research, and a strong openness to experimentation.

The decision to adopt screw caps was supported by research data and practical observation, openly discussed, and presented as a deliberate choice rather than a compromise.

► A collective movement, not isolated gestures

👉 This was not a one-off experiment. A group of winemakers, led by Jeffrey Grosset, acted in sync: they transitioned at the same time, spoke about it openly, and shaped a new narrative of quality.

This turned a technical solution into a cultural signal.

Why the trend took hold so easily in the United States

When screw caps entered the US market, it was already open to New World wines. There was no rigid association between a bottle’s status and its closure, and consumer logic prevailed: it had to be “convenient and reliable.”

The United States became an accelerator of the trend, normalizing screw caps as a mass-market standard outside Europe.

Screw caps were born where wine had no dogma—and that is precisely why they were able to change the entire wine world

…Who is Jeffrey Grosset

Jeffrey Grosset is one of the key Australian winemakers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, best known for producing world-class Rieslings from the Clare Valley. He worked with a variety where aromatic purity is critical; his wines were intended for long aging, not just early consumption.

Riesling is a grape with a delicate aromatic profile: citrus, floral, and mineral notes. Even the slightest trace of TCA does not merely spoil the wine—it completely erases its varietal identity. Where more powerful wines may mask the defect, in Riesling it becomes immediately obvious.

A classic dry Riesling is a wine without new oak, with moderate alcohol and high acidity. This makes it an ideal indicator of oxidation, unwanted oxygen exchange, and bottle variation. If the closure fails, Riesling reveals it instantly.

Grosset was a practitioner, not a marketer: his decisions were based on the result in the bottle. He repeatedly encountered situations where his wines, including samples sent to critics and importers, were spoiled due to cork-related issues.

For a winemaker working in export markets, this meant that the quality of the wine was no longer fully under his control. His philosophy came down to a simple principle:

if a wine is made precisely and correctly, it should not lose because of its packaging

By the time he transitioned to screw caps, Grosset had already established a strong reputation for quality, which allowed him to go against market expectations without risking immediate commercial failure.

He did not “invent” the screw cap—he was the first to make it a principled choice for high-quality wines. It did not improve the wine; it removed an unnecessary risk.

Grosset did not simply change the closure—he spoke about it openly, explaining his reasoning to both the market and his peers.

Riesling became the first ally of the screw cap, because it does not forgive mistakes and does not rely on myths

Why red wines adopted screw caps later

Red wines transitioned to screw caps noticeably later than whites—and this was not due to any incompatibility with the closure, but rather to perception risks and stylistic expectations.

► Tannin and structure mask defects

Unlike white wines, many reds have a strong tannic structure, a denser aromatic profile, and are often aged in oak. This means that mild cork taint can remain unnoticed for a long time, differences between bottles may be perceived as “individuality,” and defects are detected later or not directly linked to the closure.

► Red wines are more strongly tied to the myth of aging

It was red wines that became the carriers of the idea that “wine must breathe in order to develop.” Aging was romanticized, associated with the slow ingress of oxygen, and perceived as a process that should not be “sealed.”

Even in the absence of evidence, this myth proved particularly persistent in the red wine segment.

► The market for top red wines is the most conservative

Classic red wines are more often collected, traded, and evaluated not only for their taste, but also for how well they align with expectations. In this segment, screw caps long appeared as a risk to status, and any experiment with closures could be perceived as diminishing the wine’s “greatness.”

White wines could afford to experiment—red wines could not

► No immediate advantage

For aromatic white wines, screw caps delivered an obvious and immediate improvement.

For red wines, the difference was less noticeable in the short term, with benefits emerging only over time. The market tends to resist solutions whose advantages may take decades to become fully apparent.

► When red wines finally began to adopt screw caps

Red wines started to appear under screw cap once long-term aging data had accumulated, the fear of “locked-in” wines had diminished, and a new generation of consumers had emerged.

This happened later—not because red wines are less suited to screw caps, but because the stakes were higher

Myths and reality

The delayed adoption of screw caps in Europe was driven by a persistent myth that “great wines must breathe through natural cork.” This idea was supported by a historical argument: “this is how great wines have always aged—therefore, this is how it should be.”

The most famous aged wines of the 19th and 20th centuries—Bordeaux, Burgundy, vintage Port, and others—were indeed aged in bottle under natural cork, simply because there were virtually no alternatives at the time.

Back then, natural cork was not the best option—it was the only practically viable way to hermetically seal a bottle of wine for storage and transport. From this emerged the logic: if a wine became great with cork, then cork must be a condition of greatness.

► Historical reality

For a long time, bottle glass varied in standard and quality, including the neck, sealing systems were unreliable, and screw closures simply did not provide consistent performance.

Natural cork prevailed not because it allowed wine to “breathe,” but because of its elasticity, its ability to expand within the neck, and its relative availability in Europe, where suitable forests were abundant.

It worked—and that was enough. No one at the time questioned whether it was chemically optimal for wine: there were no alternatives to compare it with.

► The “survivorship” effect

Only those great wines that successfully aged under cork have reached us. We have no way of seeing or knowing the wines that were lost to cork taint, oxidation, dried-out seals, or flawed batches that were never preserved for decades.

This is a classic case of survivorship bias: we judge the system based on what endured, not on what was lost.

Over time, this was mistakenly interpreted as proof that the system itself was ideal. Natural cork became a material symbol of “high tradition,” part of the ritual, an anchor for the perception of quality.

A crucial substitution occurred: this was not proof that wine “must breathe through natural cork,” but simply a historical fact—that the entire aging infrastructure (bottle + cork + cellar) had become the norm.

That norm was later transformed into a supposed law of nature.

This is still visible today in the familiar formula: “proper aging = bottle with cork in a cool cellar”—a cultural template rather than a scientific necessity.

When alternatives finally appeared, the industry could not simply say:
— For 200 years, we have been using not the optimal solution, but the only available one.

It was far easier—and more profitable—to declare:
— Great wines must breathe through natural cork.

In this way, the absence of choice in the past was transformed into a normative requirement in the present.

It is fundamentally impossible to estimate how many historic wines were lost due to faulty cork

► No archive exists

Historically, no records were kept of “lost bottles”: spoiled wine was simply discarded, defects were attributed to “a bad bottle,” “a difficult vintage,” or “just bad luck.”

Entire flawed batches were rarely seen as a systemic issue of closure.

Until the late 20th century, cork taint was not even recognized as a technological defect (TCA was only identified in the second half of the century). As a result, no data was collected.

► We only see the surviving bottles—a classic case of bias

Our understanding of “great old wines” is based entirely on those bottles that have survived to this day: museum pieces, auction lots, private collections, and tastings of “legendary vintages.”

But every successful old bottle we taste today is not proof of the norm—it is merely evidence of a successful outcome within a probabilistic system.

How many bottles of the same wine were spoiled, oxidized, dried out, or affected by TCA—we will never know.

► Selection was also socially reinforced

Not only wines survived—stories did too. Successful bottles were discussed; failed ones were forgotten. Tastings recorded the best examples, not representative samples.

This reinforced the illusion that:
— If we can still drink great old wines, the system must have worked.

In reality, the system was high-risk—it was simply neither measured nor named.

The history of great wines has been written by the bottles that survived; the statistics of those that were lost are gone forever

…A conversation in a wine bar’s trash bin

Two “sisters” meet there: one older—a natural cork, visibly proud and slightly condescending. The other younger, gleaming with a bright metallic sheen.

Natural cork:
— Well… at least I was opened with a corkscrew. With ceremony. With respect.

Screw cap (dryly):
— And I was opened by hand—no risk, no faults, no ruined evening.

Natural cork:
— But I have history! Terroir. Tradition, proven over time. They didn’t rush to open me—they waited twenty years.

Screw cap:
— And my wine turned out exactly as the winemaker intended it to be.

Natural cork (after a pause):
— But you don’t let the wine breathe, you treacherous suffocator…

Screw cap:
— First, that’s a myth your owners believe in. And second, you don’t offer any guarantees—even after twenty years of storage.

(Silence. Somewhere nearby, the foil from a sparkling wine bottle falls into the bin.)

Natural cork (more quietly):
— You know… they used to forgive me a lot.

Screw cap:
— I know. That was your problem.

The future of the closure debate: cork vs screw cap

The question of “who will win?” is no longer entirely relevant. Neither natural cork nor screw caps will disappear: cork will retain its place where ritual, symbolism, and the secondary market matter; screw caps will continue to dominate where purity, consistency, and control are valued.

This is not a war of elimination, but a division of roles

What has changed most over the past 20–25 years is this: winemakers have gained the right to choose, and consumers have gained a more honest product.

In this confrontation, there may be no single winner—
although one already exists: the consumer

Conclusions

Screw caps have changed not only the bottle, but the mindset of the industry: from romance to control, from chance to precision.

It was precisely the pressure of screw caps that forced the industry to invest in improving natural closures—to fight TCA, to develop purified cork, and to create technological alternatives.

Screw caps did not win, and they did not lose—they forced traditional cork to evolve.

This trend has not run its course, has not reached a final victory, but it has changed the rules of the game forever.

mbabinskiy@gmail.com

To be continued: