UNCORKED

A particular nastiness has crept into the sybaritic world of wining and dining. I refer, of course, to the screw-top wine bottle. This seemed at first sight a trivial matter, but subsequent experience has shown that there's more to it than this. With the increasing use of this penny-pinching device are disappearing a whole range of minor traditional pleasures. We are assured that this glib new trend will ensure that our wine will never be corked.

So there is no need now for the happy ritual, is there? The display of the label. The careful cutting of the capsule with the wine waiter's knife. The swift realigning of the tool to expose the corkscrew. The skilled turn of the wrist as the screw is driven home. The flick which exposes the fulcrum on which the cork is withdrawn. And then - oh, happy moment! - the plop of the release. The assumption that one will want to check the state of the wine; a little poured into the bottom of the glass. A quick check of the nose, a swirl around one's tongue, and the word of acceptance. Only then can the pouring begin.

And to replace this? The bottle plonked down, a muscular twist of the wrist, and there you are, mate. What next? Crown corks, I shouldn't wonder. All this, of course, is seized upon by the colonials, for whom hygiene is all and mystery nothing. All these bottles of wine ruined because it is corked! After a long life-time of happy bibbing I can recall only two occasions on which the wine had in fact deteriorated: surely a small loss for the vintner to cover.

How to avoid this grossness? Stick to the great wines of France, Germany, and Italy - which is far the best advice, anyway - and search the upper shelves. Presumably the good wines will always be traditionally presented, but I have an uneasy feeling that that the ordinary drinker will find his choice gradually more and more restricted.

And how about spin-off, in this global age? The little cork-oak plantations of Portugal where a whole way of life is threatened by the drying-up of demand for the crop of these strange trees? Well - tough.