Many people like to age wine before they enjoy it, but the growing acceptance of screw cap wine bottles brings up a good question; can screw cap wines be aged? Well at first it would have been silly to do so. It more than likely would have not had any noticeable effect on the wine. But with new screw caps it is just as easy as aging a wine with a cork. The reason behind this is the improved technology behind the screw caps and how they can now mimic a cork. Corks allow just a tiny amount of oxygen into the wine, microscopic amounts, but these change the wine greatly over time.
Original screw caps did not allow any oxygen in, making there Oxygen Transmission Rate or OTR 0. New screw caps have a plastic liner that mimics quite closely the OTR of cork, meaning that a screw cap wine can now, in theory, be aged effectively. So stash one of those bottles away and know that in a few years there will have completely different effects with the cheeses on cheese board sets. Of course these results are not certain, but they are fairly confident and there is always a bit of chance involved in good wine.
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