Forget the screw cap, toss aside your vino-lok and discard your corkscrew – here comes the Helix! The latest is a long line of revolutionary wine closures that will change your life (or so the manufacturers would have you believe). The lengthy debate about the most effective wine closure rumbles on and may never reach a definitive conclusion, or at least during my lifetime. The latest product to be thrown into the fray is a cork closure known as the Helix. Its shape is similar to the re-usable type of sherry or port stopper, except that it is made entirely from cork, without the plastic layer on top. The apparent advantage of this is that it can be removed by hand, with a simple twist, and without the need for a corkscrew. The cork has a spiral groove and the neck of the bottle has an internal thread which marry together to provide a seal as the cork is added.

The closure itself is a microagglomerate, in other words natural cork which is ground down into small fragments, cleaned by a steam-based process to remove or reduce the possibility of cork taint, and then glued back together (although the manufacturer will tell you that it is not really glue at all). So, in effect, the composition of this new product is a  technology that already exists, the only difference being the way that it can be removed from the bottle. You could say that it’s really a screw cap that’s made from agglomerated cork! My guess is that it has been designed to satisfy those who don’t approve of screw cap but will still be able to claim that they are using a ‘natural’ cork.

It will not be available for another year or two, but from what I have read so far, I have no immediate plans to make a change……

Forget the screw cap, toss aside your vino-lok and discard your corkscrew – here comes the Helix! The latest is a long line of revolutionary wine closures that will change your life (or so the manufacturers would have you believe). The lengthy debate about the most effective wine closure rumbles on and may never reach a definitive conclusion, or at least during my lifetime. The latest product to be thrown into the fray is a cork closure known as the Helix. Its shape is similar to the re-usable type of sherry or port stopper, except that it is made entirely from cork, without the plastic layer on top. The apparent advantage of this is that it can be removed by hand, with a simple twist, and without the need for a corkscrew. The cork has a spiral groove and the neck of the bottle has an internal thread which marry together to provide a seal as the cork is added.

The closure itself is a microagglomerate, in other words natural cork which is ground down into small fragments, cleaned by a steam-based process to remove or reduce the possibility of cork taint, and then glued back together (although the manufacturer will tell you that it is not really glue at all). So, in effect, the composition of this new product is a  technology that already exists, the only difference being the way that it can be removed from the bottle. You could say that it’s really a screw cap that’s made from agglomerated cork! My guess is that it has been designed to satisfy those who don’t approve of screw cap but will still be able to claim that they are using a ‘natural’ cork.

It will not be available for another year or two, but from what I have read so far, I have no immediate plans to make a change……