The Packaging Final Frontier

In Packaging Design, the Closure is the Final Frontier
by Paul Tincknell, June 1999

Much to my surprise and dismay the May 1998 issue of the Wine Enthusiast had both an ad, which I saw first, and a news piece on Inglenook’s new closure for their recent redesign of their low-end table wine category (e.g., the current “jug” niche). Inglenook was rightfully making hoopla about using what is called a “T” cork: a cork with a cap that allowed one to pull it out without the need for a corkscrew in the fashion of sherry or spirits cork closures. To explain my reaction, surprise that someone had finally done it, and dismay that it wasn’t one of my associates, to whom I’ve been preaching about this for the last two years, to institute this type of closure.

First, I must acknowledge natural cork’s importance to the wine industry. Without natural cork, the broad distribution of wine would not have taken place in mankind’s history, possibly relegating it to a niche beverage in the areas where wine grape vines were naturally grown. And if you are a fan of Hugh Johnson’s writing (as I am) you might contend that civilization would have suffered a serious lack of progress without a wine trade throughout the ages, as he postulates in Vintage: The Story of Wine. So it is to be understood that there is a deep rooted institution to use natural cork for closing wine bottles. With all due respect and gratitude for the centuries of closing fine wines, natural cork stoppers are the last aspect of wine packaging design that has not undergone serious scrutiny and drastic change.

So why would I recommend a winery to abandon a good, time-tested way of closing wine bottles? There are two reasons, and the most controversial one is the problem of cork-damaged wine.

While cork manufacturers are making great strides in quality control and product quality, there is still the fact that natural cork may damage somewhere between 3% to 5% of all wine on the market. Cork manufacturers such as Sugherificio Ganau S.p.A. have spent many research dollars into understanding why and how a cork taints wine. Their research pays off by reducing such problems to an estimated 0.01% of cork-damaged wines with their corks made by their proprietary TF 99.9% Process. It is possible that the cork industry may eliminate cork problems entirely. (I should point out that the cork industry is not solely to blame for cork damage in wine; the way natural corks are handled within a winery is just as crucial to the cork’s quality and integrity as it’s manufacturing process.) But until it is eliminated, cork-damaged wine above a certain percentage is really unacceptable in a modern industry. One bottle in a hundred may be the acceptable damage rate for most wine drinkers. But other beverage manufacturers would not accept the wine industry’s current 3% rate of damaged goods leaving the winery floor. Historical tradition is not a good excuse for corked wine to the connoisseur who opens a $50.00 bottle of wine, or the casual shopper who doesn’t like the $5.00 bottle they got for tonight’s dinner. It is easy to imagine customers’ reactions if Anheuser-Busch or Coca-Cola had a 3% spoilage problem!

But to put aside the controversial subject of cork damage in the industry, there is another, and I feel more pressing, issue in the design of the normal cork stopper. The Inglenook cork mentioned above used a plastic top on top of natural cork, so I offer that natural cork is not a problem in and of itself. The design flaw in a normal cork — natural or plastic — is the simple fact that one has to use a corkscrew or cork puller to open the bottle of wine.

One of the wine industry’s biggest challenges (outside of the anti-consumer trend of prohibiting direct shipments of wine to consumers) is to encourage more responsible adults to enjoy wine. Wine consumption has remained flat over the last decade, and there is justifiable concern that new adults, twenty-one plus to the current thirty-somethings, are not being exposed to wine in a casual fashion. Without new wine drinkers the industry could be facing a serious economic decline in the future.

The wine industry has been in a conundrum over the problem for almost fifteen years. When wine sales fell in the mid-80s due to the rise of the health movement, MADD, SADD, drunk driving legislation, the 90s recession, high rates of currency exchange and phylloxera, wineries were struggling for their lives (and many of them lost). Time to consider wooing new wine drinkers gave way to just thinking about carving out more of the existing market share. Now that times are good, the industry has been again challenged by the aforementioned assault on free-trade to consumers between states, as well as depleted stocks due to replanting and low harvests. It is hard to think about getting new wine drinkers when one is fighting to be able to sell to the one’s they already have — and then not having enough to sell to them!

There has been an effort to woo new drinkers, and soon an advertising campaign on behalf of the wine industry will be under way to do just that. But I believe it is time for the wine industry to reinvent itself, and one of the places to begin is with how wine bottles are closed.

No other food or beverage product made for casual consumption requires the consumer to use a tool to access it. If the new campaign, “Wine. What are you saving it for?” is to be asked seriously, one of the answers may be, “To find a corkscrew, that’s why!” The normal cork is the most unfriendly and intimidating of product closures. One of the many nightmares the average waitperson faces during table service is opening a wine bottle. Wine service is an elaborate ritual of opening the bottle: does one place the bottle on the table to open it or attempt it in mid air (and possibly spill wine)? Present the cork to the host or place it on the table? What if the cork crumbles? What about gracefully getting small pieces of cork out of the wine after it crumbles? If our front line of wine sales persons, e.g., wait staff, are, in majority, uncomfortable with opening our products how can that encourage sales? Even in the most wine-friendly of restaurants, the solution of a trained sommelier can be intimidating to the consumer.

To the untrained consumer, to be in a position of entertaining and serving wine, the above concerns for wait staff balloon to Godzilla-like proportions for them. The need for a corkscrew was one of the key factors in preventing wine sales to Generation X, as discovered by a Wine Institute Public Relations survey a few years back. Not having one handy, not knowing how to use it, and the inability to easily and cleanly re-close a bottle to save the unused portions were all cited as key reasons why young persons were not drinking wine more frequently. And all could be easily solved.

With a screw cap.

Why, as an industry, do we struggle so against the new and/or casual wine drinker? We challenge, denigrate and dismiss the most popular versions of our industry’s products: Boon’s Farm, sangria, Chablis jug wine, Chardonnay, wine coolers, White Zinfandel, Merlot (in historical order). And, for the most part, we close them with the most unfriendly and intimidating choice of bottle closures. (Note that three of the aforementioned popular wine products were closed with a screw cap! Could be that made them more popular … .)

I have not been able to find any hard research supporting the need for natural cork as a closure to accentuate the wine inside. My understanding is that a good cork is a cork that does not allow air through in any increment, so the argument that the wine matures better with natural cork seems unfounded to me. (Why would Bordeaux chateaux offer to recork older vintages in collectors’ cellars if they weren’t trying to prevent air reaching the wine?) Until side-by-side trials of cork-finished versus plastic versus screw cap closed wines conclusively demonstrate some innate attribute of the normal design, natural cork benefiting the aging process of fine wines, I don’t think the wine industry can justify the continuing use of them. And certainly not even then for the 90+% of wines that are taken home and enjoyed within days of their purchase.

I applaud the Inglenook T-cork. I applaud other wineries that have experimented or persisted with alternate bottle closures. There have been some die-hard pioneers out there trying to change popular thinking. But I am still waiting for the debut of the metal screw cap on an ultra-premium bottle of wine. Only then will I think we will see the debate over wine packaging really take off from the cosmetic changes of today to usability changes in the future.