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There is something romantic about opening a bottle of wine.  You strip off the cap in circles.  The cork is removed using a special tool, and the whole event feels a bit like Christmas.  When surveyed, 69% of Americans responded in favor of cork over other enclosures "because of its tradition".  Since much of wine price is demand and emotion, it would be hard to believe that winemakers would use anything else.  Despite all these emotions, the wine industry seems to be moving away from natural cork and towards synthetic enclosures.

The heart of the matter is the number of wine bottles going bad.  An estimated 5-12% of wines on merchant shelves are "corked".  A corked wine is a wine rendered undrinkable by the presence of  2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA).  TCA has a distinct odor, smelling like moldy newspaper or wet dog.  TCA is produced by naturally-occurring airborne fungi, commonly found in the cork.  It can also come from the barrel, but it is likely that a barrel infection would be detected long before reaching the consumer.  To reduce wine spoilage from TCA, winemakers are turning to less traditional enclosures. 

About half of Australia's recently harvested 2006 vintage will be sold with screw caps or other manmade closures, and 85% of the 2006 New Zealand wines will be cork free.  This change in direction with enclosures has resulted in a very heated battle between traditionalists and the different alternative enclosures. 

Portugal accounts for 30% of the world’s natural cork, and is worth almost 1 billion US dollars in trade.  The cork industry is worth more to Portugal than port wine.  Taking this industry from Portugal would have serious economic and environmental repercussions.  Losing the battle to synthetic enclosures would result in economic pressure to remove the forests for other more profitable industries.  Winning the battle of wine tops could prove a major coup for the synthetic enclosure industry.