Sir, – Around the Faubourg-Montmartre area of Paris, which I visited recently, they do not have any time for screw-cap wine bottles. Are they all purists, or is this a protective measure to support the cork-stopper industry?
Cork-stoppers come from the bark of the cork oak tree, the harvesting of which can only be carried out by specialists. This is to ensure that the tree, which can live for up to 300 years, will not have its trunk damaged. Then the bark will grow back, ready to be harvested again in future years.
In all of the establishments selling wine, and there are many, there was not a screw-cap to be seen.
My own attitude to the phasing out of the cork at home is largely one of indifference. I am very ready and willing to make use of a corkscrew, but I have also had some excellent libations from bottles that did not require one. I have noticed one thing: there is a tendency, at dinner, to replace the screw cap after the wine glasses have been charged, which is something one would never do if a cork had been extracted. This can make for some mirth around the table on those occasions when the time for a refill arrives and the expected slosh of the life-enhancing liquid fails to materialise from the mouth of the bottle suspended over the glass.
Even here, there is a compensation – all too often I have made the mistake, as the evening has advanced, of pouring white wine into the partially full water glass of the intended recipient.
Forgetting to remove the cap allows for a retake, in which this mistake is then less likely to be made. – Is mise,
SEAMUS McKENNA,
Dublin 14.