SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — They don't stand on snobbishness when it comes to making wine at Washington State University.

For the past six years, every wine made by a WSU enology student or researcher has come with a screw cap.

Cork used to be the only method for sealing a wine bottle. But that has changed, as aluminum screw caps have become more popular.

Screw caps help winemakers avoid cork taint, which can wreck as many as seven bottles of wine out of a hundred. Cork taint leaves a moldy, musty, off-putting smell inside a bottle.

Today, about 80 percent of the world's 20 billion bottles produced each year are sealed with cork. But the rest are sealed by screw tops, synthetic corks or glass stoppers.

More From News Talk KIT