Anyone who has popped open a bottle of wine will agree with George Taber that it is one of the few sounds in the world that brings true joy to the listener. But if the opponents of cork have their way, that sound might disappear, as Taber, a veteran business journalist and author, explains in his new book, To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle (Scribner). For nearly three centuries, cork has been used to seal virtually every bottle of wine. Since the 1970s though, that dominance has come under attack by other forms of closure such as screw caps, plastic seals and glass stoppers. Wine closures are a $4 billion business world-wide, according to Taber. Each year, 20 billion closures go into wine bottles and increasingly they are not corks. What lessons can be learned from this battle for the bottleneck? Knowledge at Wharton asked Taber to address this topic. An edited version of that conversation follows.…