Wine , does it make a difference ?

Nope.

Far as I know, some places use corks, others don't. No reflection on the quality of the wine. Though I'm particularly fussed about "quality" just whether it tastes good.

Nope.

Tradition and or snobbery aside, AFAIK a screwcap provides a more reliable seal than a cork.

Screwcaps are cool.

Some wines are imported in giant bags and bottled here.

Having been given a campag corkscrew as a wedding gift I prefer corks. It's a joy to use.

What Cougar said, corks can make for rather variable wine. Everything I drink has a screw cap but then I tend to drink New World wine and they're not so hung up on tradition.

Screw cap can be fitted with oxygen absorption membrane. So your screw cap wine might be better for longer than a cork sealed bottle

Some wines are imported in giant bags

Well its important to stay hydrated

I'm not bothered what closes the bottle, but I am bothered how far it's travelled. I only buy European wine and it's mostly screw caps now.

Usually bring a few boxes home from France as well.

I used to serve a lot of wine. I love the process of uncorking a bottle with minimal effort using the very same corkscrew I used to use back in 90’s.

But I’m happy to drink screwtop.

It's said that corks are beneficial for aging fine wines, but a quick Google suggests it's a matter of some debate.

This is vinyl vs CD again, isn't it.

The last screw-top on a wine bottle I opened fell apart as I removed it.

Though to be fair I’ve had the same experience with corks.

I like corks - but just because I like them. The wine under a screw-top not worse because of the screw-top.

Screwcaps are quite often used on New World fine wine so it's not indicative of the quality. Went to a wine tasting event once and one producer had bottled one vintage in both cork and screwcap to show how it affects ageing. The corked wine had softer tannins but less fruit flavour, while the screwcap was fruiter but more tannic. Kind of demonstrated perfectly why cork is better for those classic tertiary wine flavours that come from ageing. For fruity, easy drinking plonk a screwcap is probably more desirable because it keeps the wine fresher.

The Bordelais have been trialling screwtops on 1er cru wines for some time but, given the long maturation for these wines, it will be many years before they pronounce.
Expect a (qualified) yes.
I have some bottles of Australia's finest reds and none have screwtops.
Screwtops eliminate the possibilty both of a corked wine and getting fragments of cork in the glass.

Most of the red wine we drink is Old World and the vast majority of bottles have corks. We’ve tried a blind tasting of corks vs screw caps and the bottles with corks came out on top.

Corks allow the wine to breathe a bit and so ages better.

The problem with screw tops are they're too easy to open.

A cork allows the wine to mature over time. Screw top (or plastic cork) less so.
If a wine is to be consumed within a short time then there's no difference. If it's to be laid down for a few years then it ought to be a cork.

Of course that's the technical view. Marketing on the other hand may have its own ideas. Like the need for carbon fibre dashboards in "sporty" saloons.

Here's a POV from the Languedoc:
There are few bottles around here with screw tops for local sale, although plenty destined for export.
For the domestic market generally from highest quality to bottom traditional corks, composite and plastic corks. Glass stoppers are getting more common in the case of young ready to drink white and rosé, they don't need air to pass into the bottle so the airtight stoppers work very well and look far more presentable than an ally screw top ever could.
Saying that, a big heavy bottle with a deep punt and a real cork isn't always a sign of high quality either, but it's a good way to elevate the perceived quality of the contents, to sell fairly generic plonk to northern European and Asian markets.

A cork allows the wine to mature over time.
...
Of course that’s the technical view.

Could you expand on this?

As far as I knew, wine stopped maturing as soon as you bottled it regardless of the sealing method. Lying bottles down is to keep a cork wet in order to keep it airtight. A "good vintage" came from grapes rather than storage.

Is that wrong?

I tend to drink New World wine and they’re not so hung up on tradition.

There's practical reasons too. Cork is farmed primarily (if not exclusively) in Europe. Shipping cork from Europe to Not Europe makes little sense.

Here’s a POV from the Languedoc

Was anyone else scrolling down expecting some GoPro footage of bottle opening?

'Fine wine' matures in the bottle for years and, often, for decades.
That is not as a result of a cork.

@kayak23 it was a bit late for that and I'm not pouring it on my cereal either, a thousand apologies.

This is vinyl vs CD again, isn’t it.

It's more like directional vs non-directional speaker cable, or the benefits of putting green marker pen around the edge of your CDs...

‘Fine wine’ matures in the bottle for years and, often, for decades.
That is not as a result of a cork.

As I asked last night,

"As far as I knew, wine stopped maturing as soon as you bottled it regardless of the sealing method.
...
Is that wrong?"

Because this makes no sense to me. When you bottle wine you remove the active ingredient which turned it into wine in the first place. It's then sealed in a sterile environment. What exactly is this "maturation?" What changes? What possibly can change, even?

The Chateau Du Plonk Neuf '82 is regarded as a fine vintage because it was particularly sunny that year, not because it's subsequently sat in a dusty bottle for 30 years. No?

(Genuine question, I honestly don't know, I'm just showing my working)

Given a choice, cork everytime. There's something special about the sound of a cork popping out of a bottle that you lose with a cheap screw top.

And besides that, it provides employment in some of the poorest parts of rural Spain and Portugal.

When you bottle wine you remove the active ingredient which turned it into wine in the first place. It’s then sealed in a sterile environment. What exactly is this “maturation?” What changes? What possibly can change, even?

A few things change. It's not completely sealed, the cork does allow a teeny-tiny bit of air into the bottle, as does the screw top, and there are chemical compounds in the wine that break down/change over time, mainly due to the air that's in the bottle anyway (cos there's always a little bit) and the teeny-tiny bit that is coming through the cork/top. Plus, there will still be tiny amounts of yeast in the wine that will continue to 'work' and change the compounds within the bottle.

So, wine absolutely does/can 'mature' in the bottle. The question is whether this process is any different in a corked bottle to a capped bottle.

And besides that, it provides employment in some of the poorest parts of rural Spain and Portugal.

And preserves a unique habitat in the cork oak forests which has been nurtured for centuries and is v important for all sorts of fauna and flora

Controlled oxygenation is just another stage of transforming grape juice into something more special.
AIUI, different types of synthetic corks allow for different rates of oxygen transfer, even screw tops are engineered for this. They aren't completely airtight and it's intentional to help alter the chemical composition.
Open a bottle of wine and taste it immediately then leave it open, try it again an hour later and you'll find that it improves in flavour. Leave it to breathe overnight, taste it in the morning and it will have changed again, becoming acidic and pretty much undrinkable.
This is an accelerated version of what happens in a "closed" bottle of wine.

From a technical point of view, corks are terrible, there is around a 10% chance of the cork failing and the wine being corked. If you think about that with any other type of packaging, you'd never accept it. However, wine is more complicated than that because you also have tradition.
Nearly all cork comes from Portugal, and it is possible to know what cork is high quality and what is less reliable. They've been supplying the old world for generations, and so when the new world started producing wine they weren't given the same quality corks.
This meant they had higher rates of failure in places like NZ, as well as it being a complicated process to get cork from the other side of the world, so quickly looked for alternatives. As it's been said, screw tops can deliver all the oxidation a cork can, but is more reliable. So if there is less of a tradition, what wouldn't you use the better method?
Meanwhile, in the old world, the corks were better quality and traditions more ingrained. Choosing a screwtop over a cork is more of an active choice. There of plenty of reasons you might do this, some growers are more happy to shun tradition, cost is obviously a major factor. There is an assumption amongst many in these countries that wine with a screwtop will be worse
Tldr: if it's a wine from the old world, then there is a reason they've chosen a screwtop (and that might be because it's a lower quality wine), it it's a new world wine then a screwtop is perfectly normal (and if they've chosen a cork, it's probably just marketing).

As far as I knew, wine stopped maturing as soon as you bottled it regardless of the sealing method. Lying bottles down is to keep a cork wet in order to keep it airtight. A “good vintage” came from grapes rather than storage.

I *think* this is more applicable to whisky, where the ageing process is associated with the wood of the barrel. Once whisky is bottled, it doesn't continue to age.

From a technical point of view, corks are terrible, there is around a 10% chance of the cork failing and the wine being corked.

Anecdotally it's nowhere near 10%. I can't remember when I last had a bottle of corked wine, and pretty much all the bottles of red on sale here in Spain use (natural) corks.

This short public information film tells you all you need to know

From a technical point of view, corks are terrible, there is around a 10% chance of the cork failing and the wine being corked.

I'm not convinced by that 10% figure. Maybe in the past, but these days it's pretty unusual for us to open a bottle of wine and find it corked. Have heard friends say the same, including one who owns a wine shop.

Disappointed to see a lack of consideration for the Tetrapac. I don't think the finest vinyards that may grace the palet of your average STW connoisseur have fully embraced this packaging method yet though.

I’m not convinced by that 10% figure.

You're right, I was going from memory based on a podcast I listened to, just checked and they actually say 2-5%.
Really good listen though:
https://www.thirtyfifty.co.uk/uk-wine-show-interview-detail.asp?id=112&title=UK-Wine-Show-112-Carlos-de-Jesus-from-Amorim-on-Cork

Merchants and professional tasters (jancis robinson et al) are generally of the view that c3% of wines are corked and that covers everything from mild taint through to completely undrinkable.

The Mrs and I are both in the wine trade. Corked wines are said to be below 5% of naturally cork closed wines due to cork being better sterilised and of higher quality in general. However, it was thought to be around 10% 15-20 years ago

Most of the wines we taste are under cork* but around half of those are technical composite corks. These are dominated by the producer DIAM who make some great corks, with different grades designed to allow the wine to age slower or faster. The DIAM 3 is recommended for 3 years ageing, the DIAM 10 for 10 years and so on.

DIAM Corks

The cork vs screwcap debate will long outlive us all.

Wine consumption, what you pay for it, where you get it from etc etc is not entirely rational, so why should cork preference be rational?

I like a nice heavy glass bottle, an old school looking label with nothing in english on it anywhere, though perhaps some quantification is permissible, as long as it says 15%, 14.5% also being acceptable at a push. There needs to be thick metal foil over the cork that you can actually feel the weight of, a cork that hints at a struggle but yields with a nice 'plup', there's got to be a decent glugging sound as it pours (I imagine you don't get this with a wine box, not that I'd know). And some enigmatic residue at the bottom of the bottle.

Corked wines are said to be below 5% of naturally cork closed wines due to cork being better sterilised and of higher quality in general. However, it was thought to be around 10% 15-20 years ago

Oh - the actual wine?? That's soon gone.

This is why I ask my wife to taste in restaurants. I'll have drunk some rough wine 20+ years ago including some unpleasant bottles for sure. But I don't recall ever having detected a corked wine. And I have consumed more than 20 bottles so must have happily glugged a few.

I prefer my corks to be make of cork. They're handier for lighting fires than screw tops for one thing. And, er, that's it.

Given a choice, I’ll take the bag of Merlot inside a cardboard box on my kitchen worktop; that’ll give me about a weeks worth of large-ish glasses, without worrying about trying to seal a bottle up in order to finish what’s left.

All that stuff above ^^? Totally irrelevant to my enjoyment of the alcohol that’s in the glass.

On the wine shelf there's one Spanish with a screw cap, the rest are French with solid cork, reconstituted cork or plastic corks. The further west the wines come from the more expensive they are and the more likely they are to have a full real cork.

without worrying about trying to seal a bottle up in order to finish what’s left.

I understand the individual words, but can't really make get what this means as a sentence?

All that stuff above ^^? Totally irrelevant to my enjoyment of the alcohol

Oh I enjoy the alcohol don't worry, but as I evidently lack the palate to distinguish a corked wine I may as well enjoy all the bullshitty stuff?