Cork!

Chris Madden has a very pro cork essay in Gizmodo. And let me just say I agree with him as far as it goes. Cork has amazing properties and which explains why it has been the stopper of choice for mankind over the last few thousand years. But...(you knew there was a but didn't you?) corks can ruin wine. It can leak a chemical called TCA into the wine which while harmless, tastes terrible. There is some controversy as to how many bottles of wine are ruined by corks but the estimates I've heard boil down to 5% give or take. That's a lot of wine.

The pro-cork people fire back that cork is superior to screw caps no matter how cleverly designed when it comes to aging wine (read Chris's article to find out why). But aging I think is beside the point since the vast majority of wine drinkers in the world don't age their wine. They buy wine and drink it within two weeks at the most. So why should they have to suffer to have one out of every 20 bottles of wine they buy be undrinkable? They shouldn't, and know whit the new stelvin screw caps they don't have to. Traditionalist beware screw caps are winning and very soon will be the industry standard.