Psychology of the Stelvin closure

Let me set the current scene here in New York, at 6 o'clock on a Friday evening.  The skies are low, the rain is coming down so hard that even the scaffolding around our building gives no shelter, the rain pours between the aluminium sheets that are meant to protect us from falling bricks and pieces of mortar. The dog won't venture forth, even under the scaffolding, to pee.  So she's holding it till 10, the little beast.

I digress.

It's the end of a long, disappointing week (teaching the youth of America).  I am sitting here with a glass of wine.  An oaky, ultra-cheap Chardonnay from Washington State (Hogue if you must know).  And so my thoughts turn, naturally, to Stelvin closures.

I have that kind of mind.  It gets worse with age.  (Porca vecchiaia.)

I digress again.  Sorry.

Anyway, I had to open this ultra-cheap, not too good wine (NB: I love Hogue's Genesis Syrah, it's a great value and delicious to boot) --

I digress yet again.  Sorry.  It's those damn kids.

I wondered why I had to use a corkscrew to open this wine.  It's got an artificial cork, too.  I mean, come on, really...

It's so cheap, it seems like a natural for a screw cap.  Quick 'n' easy for a simple quaffer, as they say in the wine mags.  (I feel like a professional wine journalist when I use words like "quaffer."  Plus it has that Chaucerian ring to it.  Or is that "quiff"? Or "quim"?)

I am digressing.  It's not the wine, I've had two sips of the stuff.  It's been a long time since I've worried about quim.  MUST be those damned kids, not to mention the administrators at the school.

I've wondered many a time why all those ultra-serious articles about screw caps haven't considered the psychological aspects of their use.  (Aha! you think, he's finally getting to the point.)

I mean, we drink case after case of that OK New Zealand savvy blank in part, I do believe, BECAUSE it comes with a screw cap.  It's so easy, no forethought required.  No special effort.  Like opening a bottle of Coke or of that plastic-tasting mineral water, what's that? Oh, Evian. 

It's so easy.  The stuff inside the bottle may not be all that great, but you open it and pour another glass or two or, on a Friday night when it's gloomy and raining and you've been telling the youth of America to keep quiet and do their work, to little avail, three. 

I have a modest proposal for the winemakers of the World.  (Not like the modest proposal Jonathan Swift made, although the idea of eating one's young appeals to me right now.)

But, encore une fois, I digress.  It's been that kind of week.  My modest proposal is this.

If you want to sell a SHITLOAD of wine in the United States of America, bottle EVERY bottle that retails for $10 or less with a Stelvin closure. 

Make it like soda, pop, or tonic (as we used to call it in funny old New England).  Quick 'n' easy.  Down the hatch.  No muss, no fuss.  Pop that sucker and guzzle.

We'll get us a nation of wine-drinkers yet.

Comments

[Fredric Koeppel]

Make that every bottle at $15 and under. Had a quiet flight in from NYC today. But I digress.

[Terry Hughes]

I was thinking it should be $15, too.

And you GET me...