Coravin launches new system for screw cap wines

A new accessory released by Coravin claims to keep screw cap wines fresh for up to three months once the original seal has been broken.

Coravin screw caps have been made available to Coravin Club members and are expected to go on general sale in the UK from 15 September, the company said this week. A pack of six caps costs £29.95, it said. It has already launched the screw cap devices in the US this summer.

Coravin has made a name for itself with technology that allows wine lovers to draw wine out of the bottle without pulling the cork and the new launch is its latest move to expand the range.

Coravin said its screw caps can keep wine fresh for up to three months once the original cap seal has been removed and the first needle puncture from the Coravin system is made. Buyers still need a Coravin system to extract wine, as they would if the bottle was sealed with a cork.

‘A screw cap solution has been a popular request since introducing the original Coravin in 2013,’ said Greg Lambrecht, founder and inventor of Coravin.

‘We’re here to help enhance the wine experience by helping people enjoy any wine, in any quantity, at any time – without compromise.’ The caps are available in standard and large sizes, and can withstand up to 50 punctures, making them reusable for around 10 bottles of wine, Coravin said.

Coravin tested its screw caps extensively in Australia before release. Australia and New Zealand winemakers have pioneered using screw caps on some of their best wines.

Napa Harvest Reaches Crisis Point

"Labor or lack thereof this year is the big story," Rod Berglund, owner and winemaker of Joseph Swan Vineyards in Sonoma County, has said. "Vineyard managers are demanding a week's notice for picking and even then cannot guarantee a spot on their calendar."

Until Labor Day weekend, the 2017 vintage was proceeding smoothly. California had above-average rainfall last winter for the first time in five years, alleviating longterm drought concerns, but the rains did not continue into the summer, so mildew hasn't yet been a big problem. (That may be about to change.) The crop size was looking a little smaller than average, perhaps a longterm drought effect, but the ripening was steady and the quality looked good.

Then came an unprecedented heatwave in the country that now officially does not believe in global warming.

On September 1, famously foggy San Francisco had the hottest day in the city's history at 106° Fahrenheit (41°C). As usual, the city was significantly cooler than surrounding wine regions – even the cool-climate ones. Healdsburg, at the nexus of the Russian River Valley and Dry Creek Valley, reached 114°F (46°C). Salinas, in normally chilly Monterey County, hit 107°F (42°C).

"Before the heat spike, this year's harvest started slower and at a nice pace," Lee Martinelli, owner of Martinelli Vineyards and Winery in Sonoma County, told the media. "However, with the recent heat, many vineyards have ripened all at once so the demand to pick them has risen as well."

An ongoing crackdown on illegal immigrants, which started under President Obama and has accelerated under President Trump, has led to shortages of farm labor.

"The big immigration concerns mean that even though the industry here employs only legal workers, the giant vacuum created by the crackdown has meant that many people that might have come for the harvest are now ending up filling slots in other industries and areas," Berglund said.

This is good for the remaining workers: the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week before the heat spike that some high-end Napa wineries are paying $45 an hour for grape pickers. But it's not good for wineries, which must outbid each other to get crews and even in some cases pay in advance.

And with many grapes ripening at once, pickers are not the only necessity in short supply. Corey Beck, executive vice president of Francis Coppola Winery, mentioned that there's a lack of trucks available to transport freshly picked grapes to wineries because many small wineries do not own their own trucks.

All of this might sound dire, but the timing of the heat spike is at an interesting point in the harvest: pretty late in the game for white grapes, thus endangering the quality of those that were still hanging last weekend, but fairly early for the grape by which California will be most judged, Cabernet Sauvignon. Some growers will get lucky with the timing.

Sicilians the First Italian Wine Drinkers

While Georgia might claim the title of wine's birthplace, a recent find in Sicily has made scientists rethink their time frames when it comes to wine drinking in Italy.

A team from the University of South Florida discovered the remains of terracotta pots during an archaeological dig in a cave on Monte Kronio in southwest Sicily and found wine residue on the bottom of the pots, showing that the original owners of the pots were drinking wine more than 6000 years ago.

Before the find, scientists believed that winemaking developed in Italy around 1200BC, but the USF team's find appears to have pushed that date back by about 3000 years.

"Unlike earlier discoveries that were limited to vines and so showed only that grapes were being grown, our work has resulted in the identification of a wine residue," said Davide Tanasi, the archaeologist who led the research. "That obviously involves not just the practice of viticulture but the production of actual wine – and during a much earlier period."

To give some idea of just how early that was in human history, it is about the same time that scientists believe the first horses and chickens were domesticated, so that coq au vin recipe might be older than you think.

The find also suggests that there might be some competition for the title of the cradle of winemaking. The earliest known evidence of winemaking was found in a dig near the small town of Aremi in Armenia back in 2011. That was also 6000 years old, although some of the traces found in that particular residue might have come from pomegranates, which are common in Armenia, to the point of being the national fruit. The Sicilian find is important, because pomegranates did not grow in Sicily then, so the residue is definitely from wine.

To add to the confusion about where wine originated, the country of Georgia has long claimed the honor for itself. Just last year a dig in the southeastern region of Kvemo Kartli found vine residue and grape seeds that dated back 8000 years to Neolithic times. However, the Sicily discovery would appear to be the oldest actual wine residue to be found so far.

Local winemaker and historian Alessio Planeta told the Guardian newspaper that the discovery filled him joy. "Before this, we used to think that Sicily's wine culture arrived with the island's colonization by the ancient Greeks."

The find suggests wine drinking was a pretty big priority for ancient humans, putting winemaking within a thousand years of the development of the wheel. In fact, it precedes the written word as we know it by some 800 years, and therefore, presumably, the first wine critic.

But, in the great scheme of human development, winemaking is still an infant practice compared to beer, which dates back to between 8000 and 7000BC.  

 
That's all for this week, come back again next Thursday for our next installment!
Cheers!