Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Wine Cork

Humans are constantly inventing and innovating, examples of our great intellect can be seen in the evolution of planes, cars, and trains all have changed drastically in the last 100 years. Although some things have withstood the change of time, such is the case with the wine cork, which has been around since the late 16th century. Why then is it that the cork has not been innovated itself? Many have tried but none of the alternatives have widely caught on. Any bottle caught with an alternative cork material is immediately written off as a cheap or bad wine.
What then is so great about a cork? It’s most important quality is its impermeability, meaning it is highly resistive to penetration of moisture, or in this case wine. Other important features of the cork include its compressibility and flexibility, which means that the cork can be compressed to half its dimensions and expand back almost entirely back into its original shape. This feature of the cork allows cork to fill in imperfections in the glass of the wine bottle, allowing for a tight seal. Finally the corks durability in extreme temperatures and its long life span of about 20 years make it the ideal choice of wine makers all over the world. Cork however is not without its disadvantages, the biggest disadvantage of cork …show more content…
Naturally it would only make sense then for a cork alternative to be constructed of glass. Hence the Vinoseal an all glass stopper that has similar oxygen transfer rate of synthetic corks. It also doesn’t suffer from the stigmatism of screw tops because glass is already seen as a higher quality product. However it does suffer from the fact that there is no wine manufacturing equipment that can currently handle attaching these stoppers to wine bottles. In result of this they must be manually attached, making these toppers only useful for home use, or small