One of my favorite wines is Two Hands Brave Faces (particularly the 2005 vintage). It is a wonderfully jammy shiraz grenache from Barossa Valley, Australia. It is a delicious big boy of a wine with 15% alcohol, and a price tag of nearly $40 —a nd it has a screw cap.

While cork still dominates the market, screw caps and other alternate closures are becoming more prevalent in upscale wines. Screw caps are no longer relegated to mass produced inferior wines, and new types of closures are being created all the time.

There are pros and cons to each type of closure, and even some strong ecological reasons for keeping cork around. The following is information about common closures seen on the market today.

This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2010.