To Cork Or Not To Cork Reviews
The Wall Street Journal
In ”To Cork or Not to Cork,” Mr. Taber does an able job of telling the story of the cork industry’ s early history, its rise to global monopoly status and the recent search for alternatives. On the central question – to cork or not to cork – he takes a pass. The science, he believes, is inconclusive. Screw caps and plastic corks seem to work fine for wines, especially white wines, that are drunk soon after they are bottled. But it is too early to tell if they will work for wines that should stay in the cellar for years.
Jonathan Karl, Senior Security Correspondent for ABC News
Financial Times
A Corking Tale of the Wine-Stopper Wars...the surprisingly gripping story of the conflict between increasingly frustrated wine producers, an obdurate cork industry, some truly obfuscating public relations activity and supporters of various alternative bottle stopper
Janice Robinson
The Washington Post
Put a Cork In It?...a high-spirited story...
Jane Black
Wine Spectator
George M. Taber Tackles a Not-So-Old QuestionNo matter where you stand on the great debate over corks—love ‘em, hate ‘em, or still undecided—To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance and the Battle for the Wine Bottle (Scribner, 2007, $26), by George M. Taber, gives the subject a timely and thorough examination.
James Laube, Wine Spectat
The New York Times
It’s Just Fine to Drink and Read...sets forth the pros and cons of each in no-nonsense prose that will make you want to pull out the dusty old microscope and examine a cork.
Eric Asimov
A corking tale of the wine-stopper wars
Financial Times, November 16, 2007In the 1990s, I went to take a look at Amorim in Portugal, the world’s pre-eminent cork supplier. On the way to one of their cork processing plants, my host anxiously discussed the weather reports in Europe’s wine regions. Spring frosts and unsettled weather in June, when the vines flower, can seriously reduce the number of grapes, thereby having a direct effect on the number of corks needed the following year. Wine bottle stoppers account for 70 per cent of the value of cork producers’ sales. The cork industry and the wine business are symbiotically linked – which is why it is so extraordinary that there has traditionally been such a gulf between them.
Read moreJanice Robinson
It’s Just Fine to Drink and Read
The New York Times, December 19, 2007BEEP, beep, beep, beep: it’s the truck backing up with this year’s crop of wine books for the holidays.Make no mistake, reading is the next best thing to drinking for the wine lover, and much more practical on subways, buses and trains.
Vintage ’07 is a bit straightforward and earnest — foursquare, as Britons might say — more ripe and informative than inspiring. Still these six books have much to say and do it well.
Read moreEric Asimov
George M. Taber Tackles a Not-So-Old Question
The Wine Spectator, October 10, 2007No matter where you stand on the great debate over corks—love 'em, hate 'em, or still undecided—To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance and the Battle for the Wine Bottle (Scribner, 2007, $26), by George M. Taber, gives the subject a timely and thorough examination.
It's too bad Taber couldn't be the judge and jury on this case and help the wine industry solve one of its most vexing headaches, that of how best to seal its bottles. His book gives all three of the major closures, cork, plastic and twist-offs, their due, pros and cons. But none of them emerges as the clear winner.
Read moreJames Laube
Put a Cork In It?
The intense debate over how to seal a bottle of wine. Washington PostOn Oct. 2, 2002, a gray hearse pulled up in front of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Four pallbearers, including one in a dark purple tuxedo, stepped out and carried a casket up to the Campbell Apartment, a chic bar on the second floor of the terminal. Mourners included British wine writer Jancis Robinson and Randall Grahm, founder of California's Bonny Doon Vineyard. The dearly departed? A humble wine cork.
Read moreJane Black
How to End a Bottleneck
The Wall Street Jourmnal, October 3, 2007If you order a bottle of wine at a high-end restaurant these days, the sommelier might just come over to your table, a fine vintage in hand, and twist off a metal cap as if he were opening a bottle of Pepsi. Whether this tableside performance – so banal compared with the artful choreography of the corkscrew – is a sign of the cultural apocalypse is hard to say. But a business revolution does seem to be under way: Winemakers around the world are rebelling against the cork.
Read moreJonathan Karl
