Randall Graham announced a while back that Bonnie Doon was now "totally screwed", i.e. all screw-top bottles, and other vineyards are beginning to use artificial corks. I was thinking about what effects it would have on a home wine cellar if eventually everyone got screwed or corked artificially.
It would seem that we would no longer have to worry about humidity. Whether your wine cellar was Death Valley or Okefenoke wouldn't matter. Also, it would seem that there would be no need to store wine horizontally, we could store it upright like jars of salad dressing in the supermarket. (Although that seems a bit precarious. Maybe we should still store it lying down for safety reasons.)
It would seem that the lead capsule would also go the way of the buggy whip, and it may be time to sell your stock in companies that make foil cutters.
Anything else? I wonder if the lack of a cork would effect the MAXIMUM time something could stay in the celler? I'm thinking of the
2000 year-old Greek amphoras with wax capsules that were recovered from a sunken ship and still proved drinkable. Maybe it's always the cork that eventually gives way and ruins the wine.