Chris Shanahan: How will wine’s future be sealed — cork versus the rest in Australia for 2005

The battle for the top of the bottle seems to be diversifying as the pure-cork monopoly crumbles.

Vinpac International – the packaging subsidiary of Beringer Blass – estimates that plugs will hold 85 per cent of the wine-seal market in 2005 and screw caps 15 per cent.

Interestingly, whole corks should fill just 25 per cent of wines bottled in Australia next year – exactly the same as the projected market share for synthetic plugs.

‘Technical corks’ (those granulated plugs with whole-cork discs on the ends) are headed for a 35 per cent market share.

And watch out for ProCork – an Aussie invention that sees corks or cork agglomerates coated with a polymer membrane designed to block 2, 4, 6 TCA, the main agent responsible for cork taint. According to Vinpac, “ProCork is being taken up at a rapid rate”.

Screw caps are poised to capture 15 per cent of the market.

These are the Vinpacs projections in the battle for the bottle in Australia in 2005:

Whole natural cork 250 million
Technical Cork 350 million
Synthetic plugs 250 million
Subtotal plugs 850 million
Screwcaps 150 million
Subtotal non-cork 400 million
Total seals 1 billion