How Plastic Popped the Cork Monopoly

online.wsj.com

9 points·grellas··6 comments

This is a novel use of the word "monopoly" -- There are currently (from the article) over 600 natural cork producers, and yet a single company, gaining 20% market share, with what looks like nearly 100% of the synthetic cork market, is somehow the one who "broke" that "monopoly"?

Actually they've got ~ 10% and other plastic cork producers have another ~9% between them.

Additionally screwcaps have another 11%.

I think the title refers to cork's monopoly as a bottle seal rather than any particular producer's monopoly on cork.

Great quote:

"Even though we're a pure cork company, my motto is you sell what your customer wants and not what you want to sell..."

Bah, there's no need to use cork to seal wine anyway. A few years ago the entire Australian wine industry moved en masse to screw-top bottles and you know what? It's better. Sure, it felt a bit cheap at first, but there's no spoilage, you don't need a corkscrew, and the bottle is easily resealable. Give me a screw top any day. We don't use cork to seal anything else, and for good reason; it's an antiquated, inferior option which exists now only for marketing purposes.

For that matter all wine should be in aluminum or plastic bottles to prevent breaking and cut down on weight.

Also all that so called 'winemaking' is a huge waste of time and energy. Almost any wine flavor can be synthesized in the lab and added to neutral grain spirits. Many wines already add flavoring of all kinds, it's only a matter of convincing those obsolescent luddites that full synthetic is just as good. ;P

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