If you’re still bothered by this trend, better get over it! Screw caps are here to stay, at least for wines in the “let’s-drink-this-tonight” category. With so many of the wine world’s elitist practices becoming more user-friendly (finally!), screw caps are pushing the envelope; more and more wineries are using them and I couldn’t be happier.

It just makes sense. I once read that less than 5% of the world’s wines are meant for aging; wine producers know that the great majority of American wine drinkers are not wine collectors. We see this fact reflected in the ever expanding wine aisles of our supermarkets with an abundance of really good wines in the $10-and-under category. These are affordable, every day drinking wines and they are increasingly attracting new wine drinkers. New wine drinkers, I might add, who are in the 25-35 age group, a group the wine industry has been wooing, mostly unsuccessfully, for decades. But now, this new generation of wine drinkers has stepped up to the wine glass, ready to dive in. They have little interest in the history or the tradition of corks when they’re buying for tonight’s dinner. In fact, surveys show they want a wine that is tasty, reasonably priced and comes in attractive, slightly hip packaging.

The jury is still out on whether or not screw caps should be the closure of choice for expensive wines tucked away in a cellar for a twenty-year slumber, but PlumpJack Winery in Napa Valley stepped forward to challenge that hesitancy. A few years ago it bottled its Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon in screw caps. That wine sells for $145 a bottle. PlumpJack also makes a $44 Chardonnay and a $24 Sauvignon Blanc in screw caps. Other progressive producers include California’s Bonny Doon, Beringer and Toasted Head (one of my favorite Sauvignon Blancs); Mia’s Playground and Screw Kappa Napa (both from the younger generation of Sonoma’s Sebastiani family); and Three Thieves, a Napa Valley based screw-capped wine in a jug. The list of other new world wine producing countries switching to caps from corks is growing; New Zealand and Australian Rieslings and Sauvignon Blancs are routinely screw-capped. Ironically, a French company invented the screw cap in the 1950s, but French wine producers are resistant to using their own invention. Steeped in tradition, it is a major transition for them to make.

Screw caps do have a somewhat checkered past, as we baby boomers remember the days of Boone’s Farm and Annie Green Springs. We associate screw caps with cheap, soda-pop wine. But, new and improved wines, along with their new and improved screw caps, are making their mark. Fortunately, times have changed, and so should our stereotypes!

So, wine producers: if rare, expensive bottles of scotch come with a screw cap, what’s the fuss all about?