Now is the time for screwtops

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This is not a Throwback Thursday thing, but I’ve written this column before, or at least a version of it. This is also not an indictment of those quaint cylinders of tree bark known as cork wine bottle closures. I mean what’s not to admire about an 18th-century technology that people still get all hot and bothered about when you suggest something has come along to replace that marvel of the Revolutionary War era? They don’t shoot blacksmiths, after all, right?

So why pick another fight and why now? Well, it has everything to do with an article in the Washington Examiner with the headline, “Obama serves screw top wine at China state dinner.” The writer for the conservative-leaning weekly magazine, Paul Bedard, ridicules President Obama for his administration’s “steady decline in promoting high-end American wines.”

Thanks, Obama!

No, seriously, thanks President Obama for putting a spotlight on two important issues facing wine lovers in the 21st century. One is that great wines are being made just about everywhere. Coincidentally, I would expect China to start making world-class wines in the next few decades because they certainly have the geology, weather and topography to make great wines. Also, the Chinese have a growing thirst for Western-style fermented grape juice.

Why is making wine just about everywhere significant? Lower prices and better quality. Technology and improved know-how has made it possible for more winemaking regions to compete for the consumers’ wine dollar. Bedard excoriates Obama for serving a $30 wine to the Chinese President Xi Jinping in September as if it were impossible to find a great wine at that price. I, however, can see a future where it might actually be a bit passé to pour exceedingly expensive wines at such events.

But more than anything, the offending $30 bottle of Penner-Ash Viognier from Oregon was under — a screwtop. Everyone breathe a sarcastic “gasp!”

As I’ve tried and tried to make clear in these columns, the closure doesn’t determine a wine’s quality. In fact, as is the case of cork closures, it can be the cause of “off” wines.

Someone who was particularly teed off about Bedard’s piece was Kathleen Inman, owner and winemaker for Inman Family Wines in Sonoma, Calif. “People who are saying the kinds of things that [Bedard] are saying are simply ignorant. In the world of educated wine people and those who just know the facts about screwtops, they would agree that screwtops are the best closure for wine.”

Inman has used screwtops for all her wines since she started the winery in 2002 and has never looked back. “Back then, as I do now, I believed they were the most consistent closure. There is no cork taint and I can make my wines with 30 to 40 percent less sulfur dioxide because the screwtops don’t let in any oxygen and that requires you to use more sulfur.”

Inman produces value-oriented pinot noirs, chardonnays and pinot gris under $30. She also makes a couple of carefully crafted, single-vineyard offerings for about $70 a bottle that are amazing and age-worthy. Every bottle gets a screwtop.

And while she was fired up when she read the Examiner article, she believes such pieces will soon seem ridiculous to even novice wine drinkers. “I have people tell me in the tasting room, ‘Thank goodness for having screwtops and saving me from storing bad bottles for five to 10 years,’” she said. “I think the time for screwtops has come.”