Excerpts From: Wine Business Monthly Closure Survey - June 2007

Overall Ratings

As one might expect, the overall ratings for closure types tracks the ratings for the individual attributes (Chart 6). When these results are considered in concert with previous surveys, we find that the overall rating for natural corks has increased significantly since the last time we asked respondents to rate the closure types. At the same time, the overall rating for technical corks has remained very steady since 2004 while the overall perception of screw caps has risen very slightly.

It is important to remember that while large and mid-sized wineries were well represented among the respondents, the U.S. wine industry is predominantly comprised of small wineries. When the responses are separated by winery size we find that, while synthetic closures didn't fare well among respondents from small and mid-sized wineries, the respondents from large wineries tended to report that they viewed them as being fairly close to both technical corks and screw caps overall (Chart 7).