Don't be Scared by Screwcaps
By Chef Kurt michael Friese
visit the author @ www.KurtFriese.com
It is a commonly held belief that wine that comes with a "screw cap" seal is cheap, low quality, bad wine. For a long time that was mostly true. One does not read Wine Spectator or Decanter magazines expecting them to regale us with tales of Boone's Farm Country Quencher or Mad Dog 20/20 (a curious name of a product which supplies the opposite effect). One by one, all over the world, wine producers are starting to see wisdom in the screw cap. This is due (not surprisingly these days) to money.Â
Allow me to indulge in a brief history lesson. Wine's first containers were called amphora. They were oblong clay tankards that held between 25 and 40 liters of wine. Obviously unwieldy, these were replaced by glass as soon as technology allowed (somewhere around the 1200-1300's). These first bottles were sealed with oil soaked hemp cloth. It was the Franciscan monk Dom Perignon who first perfected a method of using the bark of a Spanish oak tree as a seal. The first factory for making cork stoppers was built in Anguine, Spain in 1750, and another in Oporto, Portugal 20 years later.
Consider for a moment if we were developing the idea of wine as a bottled beverage in this day and age instead of 500-700 years ago. Do you think we'd still choose to stop it up with a chunk of tree bark? Doubtful.Â
The corks often contain contaminants that spoil the wine (thus what is referred to as "corked wine"), and often do not provide the perfect seal against oxygen or bacteria that could also ruin the wine. Some estimates are that as much as 10% of all wine falls victim to these problems – that's more than 1 bottle per case!
I am of two minds about this, though. Those who know me know I am an old softie when it comes to tradition, and there is a great deal to be said for the ritual of uncorking wine. It brings people together with a convivial spirit that is hard to match; and I for one continue to prefer it. The screw cap, though, is no longer necessarily an indictor of a wine on par with Thunderbird. Witness, for example, the Kim Crawford Marlborough "Unoaked" Chardonnay 2003 ($16/btl; $185/cs). This is a New Zealand chard that displays delightful butterscotch and bread flavors and remarkable complexity considering its age (remember, southern hemisphere wines are 6 months older than northern wines of the same vintage). It's a delicious wine, and it comes with a screw cap.
Try it with this.
Butternut Bisque with Maple and Bourbon
1 1/2 pounds Butternut squash, peeled, seeded & diced
2 each carrot, diced
1 each onion, peeled & diced
1/2 pound red potatoes
5 cloves garlic, peeled
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 each bay leaf
1 cup bourbon
1/2 cup maple syrup
chicken stock or water, to cover
salt and cracked black pepper, to taste
Simmer all ingredients except bourbon and maple until very tender. Remove bay leaf. Puree and pass through as fine strainer. Return to heat, bring to simmer, and add the bourbon and maple. Season to taste with salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Serve immediately.
visit the author @ www.KurtFriese.com
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Comments: 13
I'll put the Kim Crawford Marlborough "Unoaked" Chardonnay 2003 on my list of wines to look for. Thanks!