Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/935769
{ SOMMjournal.com } 59 In a response that manages to appeal to both nostalgia and innovation, global wine industry solutions company Vinventions has introduced a completely natural cork substitute—Nomacorc PlantCorcs™— that offers all the advantages of bark-de - rived cork without any of the disadvantag- es. In our last issue, we met some leading sommeliers who have wholeheartedly welcomed Vinventions' sugarcane-based Nomacorc closures as the wave of the future; on the production side, vintners are also eagerly embracing this new solution. In this issue, we'll meet three California winemakers who have adopted PlantCorc and are enthusiastic about this revolution - ary advance in wine-closure technology. A Moment of Epiphany Sonoma is not just on the edge of California wine country geographically; it's also on the edge of experimentation with alternative grape varieties and production methods, including the usage of cutting- edge wine closures. At Davis Family Vineyards just outside Healdsburg, Guy Davis is as wildly enthu - siastic about Nomacorcs as he is about Sonoma terroir. After gaining harvest ex- perience at Chave in the Northern Rhône and completing a stint at Sky Vineyards on Mount Veeder, Davis produced his first commercial vintage in 1995: 250 cases of old-vine Zinfandel from the Russian River Valley. In 1996, he bought his own vineyard there comprised of 100-year-old Zinfandel vines, and crushed his first vintage under the Davis Family Vineyards label a year later. He now crafts vineyard-designated wines— including Pinot and Chardonnay, as well as Rhône-style varietals and blends—from several other Sonoma properties as well. Davis also had his own label in New Zealand from 1999 to 2000, where he observed the transition to screwcap. "Screwcaps took a little pressure off for the use of non-cork closures, but the more I looked at screwcap, I didn't like its inability to allow evolution of the wine in the bottle," he explains. Like many wine consumers, Davis ad - mits that he "loves the ritual" of cork. He has a less fond impression, however, of its well-documented inconsistencies. "Being a hands-on winemaker from vine to bottle, and also being the person doing sales, I don't like the fact that we accept a certain amount of failure in a product that costs close to a buck apiece," he says. The veteran winemaker first heard about Nomacorc about a decade ago, and credits somm-turned-vintner Pax Mahle for being "a year ahead of [him] in exploring Nomacorc" and for openly sharing his findings. Davis' own epiphany came six years later after he attended a blind tasting sponsored by Nomacorc at the Triangle Wine Experience in Raleigh, North Carolina. "They tasted us on two flights—six different wines, three of each per flight," Davis recalls. "Each of the three was bottled on the same day in three dif - ferent closures; the first round was bottled for three years, the second for five years. Six out of six, I chose the Nomacorc. I had to pay attention to that!" The encounter was all it took for Davis to get hooked on Nomacorc and begin introducing the closure to his own wines—first through trials on rosé and white wines, then by implementing it with his red wines in 2015. "On every level, it hit on what I was looking for," he says. One of the qualities that emerged as a strong selling point for Davis was the adjustable oxygen transfer rate of Noma - corc closures, which allows the wine- " With Nomacorc, I can put a whole other level of winemaking into play. " "Guy Davis, Davis Family Vineyards