Nomacorc revolutionizes wine bottle closures

You probably know that the argument about screwtop wine closures has been resolved. They work. They preserve the wine exactly where it is when the winemaker puts it in the bottle, according to Don J. Huffman, a farmer-turned-winemaker who’s now traveling the country to educate consumers about wine closures.

Part of the reason they do, he says, is that they are completely impermeable—no oxygen gets into that wine after it’s bottled, unlike how it does, very gradually, enter the bottle when a wine is sealed with a cork. That cork leakage is what’s behind the idea of “cellaring” your fine wines. The winemaker knows the rate at which oxygen will be entering that bottle, and so s/he calculates how many years in the cellar will continue to make it eminently drinkable. Complicated, eh? Yep, those winemakers are pretty much geniuses when it comes to this stuff.

But Huffman admits, lots of consumers don’t want a wine closed with a screwcap. He says he personally always uses an aerator to decant a wine closed with a screwcap. And his concern about these things is why he works with a company called Nomacorc. They market a new type of wine closure—a permeable cork that has several distinct advantages over regular cork, including giving the winemaker the ability to call the shots on when a cellared bottle is at its absolute prime.
 
Nomacorc says there are 10 reasons you can be glad that your wine is closed with one of their corks. And here are 5 of them:
 
  1. Eliminates faults and returns. You’ll never have to take back a bottle with a Nomacorc or deal with a broken or crumbling cork.
  2. Your wines will taste the same, from bottle to bottle, because Nomacorc uses the latest technology to control oxygen ingress.
  3. They’re easy to extract.
  4. Nomacorcs are recyclable and have a very low carbon footprint, especially compared to screwcaps.
  5. You get to experience the traditions connected with opening fine wines–smelling and looking at the cork and hearing that lovely “pop” when you open the bottle. 

Read more in a separate post about the environmental impact of Nomacorc compared to other types of closures.