Wine.Com Data Correlates Cork with Higher Quality Wines at All Price Points

The more expensive the wine, the more likely that it is closed with a cork stopper. And, as the price of a wine decreases, the probability that it will be closed with an artificial material increases.

That the result of a study of wines on Wine.Com's website, which also looked at the question of whether even the higher quality wines in lower price categories are disproportionately closed with cork stoppers.   The answer is yes, the most highly-scored wines are, in fact, likely to be closed with cork stoppers; whatever the price point, cork lends itself to be used by more winemakers at the premium, super-premium, and icon spectrums for quality and price.

Wine.com is the largest online seller of wine in the United States. In New York State, as of July 2022, it showed 12,589 available wines. Among the higher-growth price points, the inventory includes 6,596 wines priced above $30, where only 4% of the wines are closed with  a metal screw cap but not a single one of those rated the highest possible score. In the $20 to $30 category, over 90% of the highest rate wines are closed with cork. Even in the low-growth, low-priced segments, cork ranks as much as 80% of the top-rated wines.

The choice of closure is seen more and more as the ultimate oenological decision, as winemakers depend on cork's unique properties to protect the wine, while using the closure’s natural low oxygen transfer rate to allow it to evolve and mature inside the bottle, according to the Portuguese Cork Association (APCOR) with support from the Cork Quality Council.

Combined with cork’s unbeatable sustainability credentials, this understanding of cork as the ultimate wine closure goes a long way to explain why one in seven wine bottles sealed around the world feature a cork stopper.