Wine bottles

Not that I ever have any wine in the house - oh no! - but it's interesting to think about the different ways to seal a bottle of wine. Traditionally, of course, winemakers have used cork, which is the spongy bark of the cork tree. But in more recent times people have used plastic, or even screw tops.

In fact, screw tops are the best at not letting in any air: wine starts to turn to vinegar when it comes into contact with oxygen. But some people claim that wine needs to be ever-so-slightly exposed to air in order to mature. Just how much of that particular argument is financed by the global cork producing lobby I don't know...