Think again: Corks versus screw-caps
This segment originally aired on Sept. 24, 2017.
There used to be just one way to open a bottle of wine.
It involved a corkscrew, a bit of savvy about how the contraption functioned because, of course, they are not all the same. And it took some muscle, a little or a lot, depending on how stubborn a particular cork chose to be.
Then came the idea of the screw cap wine: no fuss, no muss, just twist off the top.
It's hard to understand is why the wine cork is still with us. What is the thinking behind preserving it, when a screw cap is a perfectly good — some would argue, a superior — way to seal a bottle of wine?
That is the subject of this week's episode of "Think Again," our occasional series about things that may need another think.
Belinda Kemp is a Senior Staff Scientist in Oenology and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.