Learning to love the screwtop wine bottle

By MICHAEL JOHNSON

BORDEAUX — Screwtop wine bottle closures have recently gained significant ground in New World wines and are now coming to Europe, like it or not.

In New Zealand, 90 percent of wine production is already screwcapped and making its way to market. Australia is at 60 percent, and California is not far behind. In Switzerland, nearly 100 percent is screwtopped.

Other producers – including a few French growers — are beginning to see the screwtop as the future.

Two-week screwtop trials have been carried out recently at Carrefour in Paris, Lille and Bordeaux, says Bruno de Saizieu, marketing and commercial director at Alcan Packaging Capsules, the main producer of the screwtop closure. The consumers were happy with the change but the distributors still aren’t sure, according to his research. Yet worldwide, he says, screwtop capping has expanded from 300 million bottles in 2003 to an estimated 2 billion bottles last year.

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Things you never thought you could do with grapes

By MICHAEL JOHNSON

BORDEAUX — I had heard from friends about the marvels of vinotherapy and was curious to know what it really was – beyond simply drinking. Experts informed me it’s a process of applying balms and creams based on white grape pits to the body to slow the aging of skin.

The center of the Caudalie vinotherapy phenomenon, near Bordeaux, invited me to experience a grape juice bath and special massage to prove that the procedure actually works.I was led to a private room with an enormous tub, its bottom and sides pierced with power-jet holes of various sizes. An assistant helped me slide into place as she emptied a vial of grape essence into the warm water, then she flipped a switch.

The grape solution was actually a combination of seeds, skins and pulp of white grapes that vineyards put aside after pressing the grapes for their juice and eventually white wine. Before the Caudalie people came along, this sludge was disposed of as waste. Read More »