Uncorking the bubbly, the iconic symbol of hi-society celebration honed into a ritual over the decades, is turning into an unintended victim, thanks to the wine industry’s quest for technology upgradation.
A number of winemakers, including global players like Moet & Chandon and Fosters Group, are showing a marked preference for aluminium crown caps over the good-old wine cork. As a result, the pomp associated with opening a bottle of wine could vanish over a period of time and your wine opener could become a museum piece.
More importantly, storage of wine is becoming simpler as the need for laying bottles horizontally would cease to exist. Wine bottles with aluminium crown caps can be stored vertically, as there is no danger of the cork drying out, making the process of opening the bottle clumsy.
Wine in tetra packs and cans may not be ideas whose time has come, but the aluminium crown is gaining increasing acceptance. This could be good news for booming consumer markets like India, where new customers are not accustomed to storage and uncorking techniques.
The change, industry players say, is being driven by supermarkets which do not want to be saddled with wine bottles being returned by customers due to a faulty cork or difficulties in uncorking it. Aluminium crown caps, they say, are 100% reliable, as the chances of a cork going bad are far higher.
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