De Bortoli Wines is to blaze the trail for the introduction to the sparkling wines sector of an innovation that has revolutionised still wine packaging over the past decade – screw top closures.
The long-established winery has been signed up by the creators of a new screw cap designed specifically for sparkling wines, Guala Closures Australia, and packaging partner O-I, to spearhead its introduction into the market and prove the viability of the concept.
The closure, dubbed the Viiva system, is the result of more than five years of development, which came to fruition in Australia after Guala's Italian parent company was forced to give up on its early development work on the system.
It will feature on De Bortoli's Trevi and Willowglen sparkling brands from this month, ahead of its wider international launch starting at the upcoming London Wine Fair in the UK.
The caps are able to retain the carbonisation and quality of an opened bottle of sparkling wine through an innovative combination of improved screw design, the aluminium material used to manufacture the caps, and the liner within the closure, Guala Australia's national sales and marketing manager, Simon Yudelevich, explains.
He says the project was prompted by industry calls for such a closure system, and concerns over the difficulties of the sparkling wine sector to overcome such market challenges as consumer reluctance to open and waste bottles of sparkling wine, problems of spoilage and waste from corkage and reluctance by bars, clubs and the events sector to serve sparkling wines by the glass.
“We have had the industry come to us to address the problems of loss of carbonisation, and some taint to the product, from traditional closures,” Yudelevich says.
“The challenge for us was to develop a product that could keep the pressure in a bottle of sparkling wine after opening and re-sealing, and also protect the quality of the wine.
“After taking over the product from our mothership in Italy, we began working with O-I very early in the piece, and began building on that initial work started in Italy.”
He says O-I's contribution was important, as Guala needed access to large numbers of glass bottles for testing of the system, and in particular glass that was capable of withstanding the high pressures used in the testing of prototypes of the closure.
“And also, once we were satisfied that the closure worked, we needed O-I to commit to making the moulds for the bottles, which are slightly different, and slightly higher in dimensions, than standard wine bottles,” Yudelevich explains.
The resulting closure is rated to suit traditional 5 gas standard wines. But Yudelevich says testing went much further than this benchmark. The stringent laboratory trials in Australia subjected the Viiva closure to pressures of up to 150 psi, as well as temperatures from below freezing to up to 60 degrees Celsius over extended periods.
“We also tried to simulate harsh storage and transportation conditions, as are often found in Australia,” he says.
The trial bottles were, for example, tested at various temperature in top load stacks up to three pallets high.
Yudelevich says that at the end of testing, the closures were found not only to work in such a variety of conditions, but able to maintain carbonisation and quality of sparkling wines for long periods after opening.
Yudelevich says the ability to offer screw cap technology for the sparkling wines market brought numerous advantage to consumers, retailers and hospitality businesses.
“For consumers, it removes the need to finish a bottle at one sitting,” he says. “Also, you can lay it back down in the fridge after opening, which you can't traditionally do with sparkling wines.
“For trade, the benefits are obvious – for example, selling by the glass in restaurants, bars and clubs, or events like the Melbourne Cup where hundreds of thousands of drinks are sold, but caterers are reluctant to open and waste bottles of sparkling wines.”
It also reduced returns due to corkage, he says, a problem estimated to affect between up to six per cent of sparkling wines, or the equivalent of 320 million bottles of sparkling wines, around the world each year.
“And while it may not sound so serious, it also reduces the risk of cork missiles,” Yudelevich says.
