Corkless Wine Bottles

Amy Dixon

Amy Dixon is a visually impaired professional triathlete and member of the USA Paratriathlon National Team. She is the reigning Aquathlon World Champion, seven-time ITU Gold Medalist, current US National Champion triathlete and USA Paracycling Time Trial National Champion. She is ranked sixth in the world in the Paralympic International Rankings and has recently moved to San Diego to focus her training for her road to the Tokyo 2021 Paralympic Games.

Amy lost 98% of her vision to a rare autoimmune disease and now serves as a patient advocate and president of the international nonprofit Glaucoma Eyes. In 2017, she founded Camp “No Sight No Limits,” the first-ever camp dedicated to producing elite-level blind triathletes in San Diego. Her mantra is, “You don’t need sight to have vision.”

Bottom Line/Personal: One of the interesting trends is that good traditional corks—bye-bye. And in fact, I’m seeing a lot of screw tops.

Amy Dixon: Yes.

Bottom Line: Good?

Dixon: Yes, it’s fabulous. Good, it’s great. It is great. It’s one of the best things that has happened to the wine business in the past 15 years. Honestly, 95% of wine is designed to be consumed within its first five years of being bottled. 95%. So that 5% that is built to age long-term and that will appreciate in quality and value over time is a very, very small percentage of wine.

So if you’re drinking your wine over the next five years, a cork is not going to give you any sort of advantage. In fact, in many ways it can be a disadvantage because it can be contaminated with a particular type of chlorinating agent that’s used to wash the corks during processing called TCA. If TCA gets into your wine, it spoils the wine. It won’t hurt you—it’s not a bad chemical like that—but it tastes awful.

So if you want to avoid that entirely, screw top is a fantastic way to know that you’re going to get a great bottle of wine every single time. You don’t have to carry around a corkscrew when you’re going to the beach or on the boat. It makes life super, super easy.

Bottom Line: And are they socially acceptable?

Dixon: Well, you lose a little bit of the romance of opening a bottle of wine and having flourish. But you know, if you put a towel over it, it’s fine.

Bottom Line: Are screw tops available from all regions?

Dixon: Yes, throughout the entire world—actually, even Bordeaux. I was going to say Bordeaux might be the only place that I haven’t seen screw tops, but that’s not true. A lot of their white ones now, I’m seeing coming in screw tops. So it’s kind of exciting.

Bottom Line: So how come—screw tops have been around forever, so why suddenly, or why suddenly recently?

Dixon: I think it had to do with the Cork Growers Association, probably. Lobbying in the corner of the market.

Bottom Line: They had to protect the trees and the cork.

Dixon: Yes, protect the cork growers.