Jim Boyce

The synthetic closure above was made by Nomacorc and used to stop a bottle of Tasting Series 1980 wine produced by Dynasty. The “1980” refers to the founding year of the company, not the vintage.

I recently tried this wine with Nomacorc CEO Lars von Kantzow, Asia sales manager Mark Coleman and China commercial manager Angel Zhong over dinner. The wine was quite thin and, to me, typical of many of the mass produced options in the market. More importantly, it was clean. So was another wine that uses a Nomacorc closure, this one from Buehler Vineyards in California, although in this case it tasted good.

I have written before about closures, especially about screw caps, including this initiative by Grace Vineyard. But they are hardly the only players in the closure game. Given that many producers in China seem as wedded to using corks as to trying to replicate Bordeaux-style wines, and that I have found quite a lot of sub-par corks in those cases, synthetic closures such as Nomacorc are an important alternative to consider, especially for those seeking consistency. I still lean toward screw cap, but I have a lot to learn about closures and have been asking many wine makers about what they think, so expect more on this topic.

For more info on Nomacorc, see the company’s websites in Chinese and English.

(Photos courtesy of Angel Zhong)

The 1980 Tasting Series from Dynasty

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