Wine & Spirits - April 2021 - 17

for 15 to 20 percent of the premium market for
natural cork. In June 2020, they launched their
own technique for cleaning cork, InnoCork Circuit, which is a combination of two processes:
InnoCork and PureCork. " We started putting
the first equipment in in June, " says Cork Supply founder and president Jochen Michalski.
" Then in October we installed two more units,
and the three units have enough capacity for us
to do 100 percent of [our] corks. "
Cork Supply already had a process called
DS100 where they individually do sensory analysis on each cork, in a human-based equivalent
to NDTech for premium wine corks. " It is quite
expensive to do, " says Michalski. " We now have
an industrial process so we don't have to sniff
each cork. With this system, we will be able to
reduce TCA to, basically, zero. " He adds, " I hate
saying 'zero' because I don't think zero exists
in any business. I say 99.85 percent accuracy. "
Like Amorim, Cork Supply will not increase the
cost of its corks to cover the new processing.
Ana Cardoso, Cork Supply's R&D director, explains the system. " From an engineering perspective, it is not that hard to remove
volatiles from a matrix like cork. The issue is
preserving all the cork properties, " she says.
" For the last fifteen years we have been using
steam-distillation processes. They are capable of detaching the TCA molecule from the
matrix. Steam increases the temperature, so it
reduces the attachment, and, also, the steam
itself affects the properties of the volatilization
of the gases. So, we have reduced the vapor
pressure of TCA and are, at the same time,
detaching and volatilizing the TCA better. "
InnoCork uses just steam, but while that is
fine for granules, it damages the properties
of punched natural corks. " For natural corks,
our Innocork Circuit system is using ethanol
as well as steam, " says Cardoso. The addition
of the ethanol step, which is the essence of
PureCork, means that they can work at lower
temperatures and with a longer cycle, allowing the extraction of impurities while preserving the qualities of the natural corks. " With
PureCork we have a gentler 24-hour process
that doesn't destroy the cork, " says Michalski.
Will cork taint be a thing of the past? These
two technologies, applied by the two largest
players in the cork market, together accounting for 55 to 60 percent of natural corks produced, have the potential to reduce it further.
While it has been possible to clean granules
for technical corks for a while, the significance
of these solutions is that they are effective at
cleaning punched natural cork stoppers while
retaining their desirable physical properties.
This should help winery owners and wine collectors sleep more soundly, and put cork sniffers out of business. It may also help preserve or
even grow the market share of natural cork. ●
WINE & SPIRITS

APRIL 2021

Wine & Spirits - April 2021

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