Tesco and screwcaps

Britain's dominant and financially hugely successful supermarket Tesco has been a pioneer of screwcaps for its wine range. It offers about 70 different wines stoppered with this alternative to natural cork, of which 10 constitute its own Tesco Unwind range of which it is particularly proud.

The stated reason for this determined move from cork to screwcap is the ever-present threat of TCA taint which can render a wine undrinkable or, worse, mildly lacking in fruit and bounce. (At the recent wine judging in Chile, partly because one of my fellow-judges was ex-Oddbins buyer Detective TCA Inspector Steve Daniel, the...