PlumpJack, co-owned by billionaire Gordon Getty and San Francisco City Supervisor Gavin Newsom, is bottling half of its best cabernet, or 300 cases, in screw caps. The wine is to be released in September.
The bottles topped by a screw cap -- a sleek, silvery-gray model that blends with the label -- will be priced at US$155 each. Those with traditional cork closures will cost US$145.
The screw tops are costing PlumpJack more right now because the winery had to buy them in quantities much bigger than needed.
Next month, the Bonny Doon Winery in Santa Cruz plans to bottle 80,000 cases of screw-top wine, mostly its trademark US$10 Big House Red, so-named because it comes from grapes grown near a state prison in Central California.
"Whether it confers upon us a heroic reward or converts into a party in a bankruptcy proceeding remains to be seen," said winery spokesman John Locke.
Like other wineries, Bonny Doon was spurred to try screw tops because of fear of cork taint.
Still, Butzke doesn't expect a "huge changeover any time soon" in the tradition-bound wine industry. "Whenever anybody tries to do something new, there's a lot of pressure. A lot of them are not daring to make major changes. They're watching the others."
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