Red Hill Screwed

On July 26, 2003 Eldridge Estate used metal screw cap closures for the first time. Prior to this date all wines produced at Eldridge were bottled under the traditional cork closure. Why did they change? Wendy Lloyd of Eldridge has a simple answer, “ To improve the quality of our wine.

It became very clear to us that despite the fact that we worked the vineyard ourselves, hand craft the wine in our winery and estate bottle, our product was suffering due to an external source ...... the cork. We found that cork based flavour changes had been as high as 10% but average close to 5%. 

We tried different cork suppliers and even began sourcing our own corks directly from Spain, but still the problem persisted. We also noted that when we submitted our wines to wine writers, magazines and wine shows the same wine could receive reviews that suggested that it was not showing consistently. In one example, a Chardonnay was awarded the BEST white wine trophy at a wine show just one week after receiving scores from another set of wine show judges that indicated it was extremely faulty. It would be simple to blame the wine show judges, especially since they spend less than a minute assessing wines before taking the chosen few on to the award stage. 

However, wine show judges are always industry professionals with trained palates so there must be another explanation. Looking at the wines we open at cellar door has led us to conclude that the type of closure used on a bottle is a critical point of quality control. The metal screw cap closure has been a tried and tested technology for white wines for over 30 years so it seemed a logical choice for us to use it at Eldridge Estate.

We were keen to use a metal screw cap style of closure but had some concerns. We ran consumer surveys for 12 months as we explored issues such as bottle types and technical points related to the wine preparation prior to bottling.

Thus we used an Australian made closure called supervin on July 26 for our 2003 Sauvignon Blanc, 2002 Gamay and 2002 Pinot Noir.

On Sunday July 27 Stephen and Jennifer Reiffer (pictured above) of Nedlands, WA made history when after tasting the Gamay they decided to buy some. It is a small step forward for us but it

does offer many options that will enable Eldridge Estate to continue to evolve the quality of our estate grown and made wine. - David Lloyd There is more information and photographs about metal screw cap closures at www.eldridge-estate.com.au .

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