Gimmick du jour.

Interesting new gadget from MetaCork: a wine bottle closure that is a combination cork and screwtop, without exactly doing away with the drawbacks of either.

You twist off the solid plastic capsule on top of the wine, and when you do, it pulls the cork - attached to the plastic capsule - out of the bottle. You can then take the capsule apart, and the sleeve can go back onto the bottle as a drip-protector. You're left with the cork, which is screwed onto a plastic lid, and a screw-top. If you want to reseal the bottle, you can use either the cork or the screw-top.

So you have some of the convenience of a screw-top enclosure (you don't need a corkscrew to open the wine, and you can close the bottle with the screw-top) and some of the romance of a cork (Look! It's a cork!). But you still have the potential for cork taint. Oh, and it's more expensive for the winery than either a cork enclosure or a screw-top. Enclosure.

I'm betting I don't ever see one of these in the flesh.