French winemakers are finally abandoning the cork and switching to screw-tops. And it’s about time, too.

I have always hated corks. If they provided any advantage in taste, I could never detect it; in fact, in preventing oxidation of older wines, screw tops can actually be better (not that I really understand this, but the article says so).

For me, the cork has represented the worst of persistent use of outdated technology. It has probably persisted more because of image than anything else; screw-tops simply “seem” cheap, whereas corked wine comes across as being more classy. The QWERTY keyboard, another example of a persistent anachronism, at least has a pragmatic reason for continuing: it would be expensive the replace all the keyboards and re-train all the typists. Corks have no such excuse, as far as I know.

But it’s more than just not being as good as newer technology–corks are simply bad, period. They make it harder to open the product, and sometimes break into pieces, polluting the wine. Most corkscrews are badly designed, making the task even more difficult. And once out, they don’t fit back in very easily, requiring you to use a secondary cap device.

At least some cork alternatives are not so bad; some wines have plastic or other alternative corks which don’t break or disintegrate, but even these substitutes, though easier to extract, can also be hard to put back in.

Anyone out there have examples of other persistent outdated devices or technology?