The survey, carried out by Wine Intelligence, the international wine industry research consultancy, is thought to be the first major piece of independent research into American consumer attitudes to wine bottle closures, and was conducted with 1,084 on-line respondents across America in early May 2004.
The pro-cork consumer attitude tallies with responses of UK consumers in a similar piece of research conducted last year. Over two-thirds of US respondents feel positive about buying wine with a cork in it, while only 1 per cent said they did not like buying wine with corks.
More interestingly, given its increasing presence among New World wines in particular, the screw cap closure was rejected by 52 per cent of consumers, with just 11 per cent saying that they were positive about this type of closure. Nonetheless, this is still better than the UK, where six in ten consumers rejected screw caps and a mere 7 per cent said they liked it - despite the fact that more wines are now available with screw cap closures in the UK than at any other time.
Indeed, American consumers appear much more willing to accept synthetic closures than their British counterparts, according to the Wine Intelligence survey. One in four US respondents said they were positive about synthetic, while only 8 per cent rejected it. The figures for the UK study were 17 per cent for and 12 per cent against.
However, the majority of responses in both cases were neutral - they were neither for nor against synthetic closures. Indeed, when asked if they would change brands if the wine they most often bought switched from natural to synthetic cork, a full 85 per cent of those questioned said they would not, while 46 per cent said the same about screw caps.
"Does this mean that closures don't matter," the report asks. "Not quite. The type of closure used, along with the bottle shape, the colour of the glass, the label and other visual attributes all contribute to the consumer perception of the product."
It also appears that synthetic closures are gaining ground quickly in terms of consumer acceptability, the report said. Over four in ten consumers have changed their view of synthetic for the better in the US, while screw caps are also gaining acceptance: 23 per cent of respondents said their view of this closure had improved of late, mainly because they had heard that it offered better sealing properties than natural cork.
But quality is still an attribute more commonly associated with cork than with synthetic closures, with the report showing that 48 per cent of those questioned mentioned this as the first word that came into their head when thinking about traditional cork. 'Modern' and 'innovative' held the equivalent position for synthetic corks, and 'cheap' was the top association for screw caps, a sentiment unlikely to help wine marketers seeking to stress the quality (in terms of 'sealability, at least) of this type of closure.
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