The Wine Knows

It is doubtful anyone in the Pacific Northwest has more experience working with screwcaps than Co Dinn and his fellow winemakers at Hogue Cellars in Prosser, Wash. They're into their third year of bottling 75 percent of their 600,000 cases of wines under threads.

Hogue has seen no problems with acceptance of the closure with the public. In fact, production and sales have increased since the screwcap was put put into use.

One thing that has changed, said Dinn, director of winemaking for the Constellation-owned Yakima Valley giant, is the winemaking style. He said using screwcaps forces you to be more exact in your winemaking. The closure is so good, you cannot hide any faults.

He also addressed the issue of sulfer dioxides and hydrogen sulfides, which are popping up as issues with screwcapped wines. He said it's all a matter of clean and careful winemaking.

Here's a really interesting tidbit I hadn't thought about: Because Hogue has vastly decreased the number of natural corks it uses, it's able to be pickier about the corks it uses for those wines in the Reserve and Genesis tiers. Thus, it is able to actually reduce the percentage of wine spoilage from cork taint because it can test the corks more extensively.

Watch the entire interview here: