Joe Ray

September/October 2001 - Midwest Express Magazine

The first time I pulled a plastic cork out of a bottle, I looked at it with a mixture of curiosity and befuddlement. I drank the wine, and it tasted just like it should have. Which is exactly what Neocork Technology wants to happen.

It turns out that it was a trademarked innovation made by Napa Valley’s Neocork Technologies. Founded in partnership with five wineries – Beringer Wine Estates, Clos du Bois, Kendall-Jackson, Robert Mondavi and Sebastiani Vineyards – Neocork is the result of two years of testing. This resulted a product that has sold over 80 million units, shipping millions each month to over 100 wineries on four continents. The five wineries are shareholders in the privately held company; they also provide technical assistance.

So how does it work? There are two parts to a Neocork - the inner core and the outer surface. The inner core is an inert foam resin that maintains pressure against the neck of the bottle over a long period of time. The outer surface is a more elastic material that resists cuts and wrinkles caused by standard cork-insertion machinery. Working like a gasket, it forms a smooth seal with the bottle wall. The consumer finds a cork that pulls out easily, without having to worry about getting any bits in the wine, or a broken one.

The process also allows winemakers worry less about problems common to wooden corks like taint, oxidation or leakage. Between three and five percent of wine is “corked”–or tainted by a substance called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA) that can occur naturally in the cork sanitation process. It gives wine what Neocork Technologies president Andy Starr calls a “mushroomy, wet newspaper smell”.

With a Neocork, the problem is avoided altogether, and the ceremony of the waiter placing the cork in front of you when they present your wine becomes, well, nothing more than a ceremony.

The ceremony of pulling the cork out, however, is preserved. As Starr puts it, “People have been enjoying the tradition and theater of pulling a cork for centuries. Would you buy it if your $20 bottle of chardonnay had a screw cap?”

So why isn’t it more common? Time is the answer. Since it was introduced in February of 1999, the only wine on the shelf that could have a Neocork would need to have been bottled after that period. Its pricing is competitive (wood corks range from 5 to 45 cents each) and in the long term, the company hopes to convert almost 10 percent of the world market to Neocorks. This would put them at the point where they would be producing more than 1 billion corks annually, outpacing Neocork’s 20 competitors around the world.

What about that purist inside of me, and more importantly the wine industry and its consumers? Andy is confident, “People who know wine know that cork is actually a problem,” he says. “Wine has improved dramatically over time, but cork is a 17th century leftover.”

It may take a little while for everyone to get on board, but he’s sure they’ll come around.