The pop of a traditional champagne cork could soon be replaced by the click of a metal cap if one leading producer's experiment takes off. Duval-Leroy, one of the larger Champagne houses which produced more than 6M of 320M bottles of Champagne made last year, will shortly start selling bottles with aluminium tops. This will be the first time cork has not been used to secure Champagne bottles in its 350-year history. The move has taken the wine world by surprise & left many alarmed that one of the most pleasurable rituals of drinking Champagne, "easing out the hard cork stopper" might be over. The editor/Decanter.com, said: "It is one of the most evocative noises in the world & I will mourn its passing. But to regret the passing of cork is 99% sentimental. I am sure there was an equally big outcry when they first stopped using goatskins & started putting wine in bottles." Metal screw tops have taken off in still wines, with an estimated 15% of all wine in the world now using this method to stop so-called 'cork taint' When a wine is ruined by an ill-fitting cork either rotting, or allowing in too much oxygen. The industry estimates that as much as 1 in 10 is damaged from cork taint.
