B.

While it’s true that screwcaps make opening wine easier, that wasn’t the motivation behind their increased use in the modern era. Rather, screwcaps were a response to the increased incidence of “corked” wine—i.e., wine tainted by the compound TCA (trichloroanisole) and related compounds which can move from faulty corks to the wine itself, giving the wine a smell often described as wet-dog-sitting-on-wet-newspapers. In the 1980s estimates of corked wine were as high as 8 to 10% for some wines. The first countries to embrace screwcaps were New Zealand and Australia. Today, thanks to vastly better, more sanitary techniques in harvesting cork bark and making corks, the incidence of cork taint is estimated at 1 to 5%.