Wines & Vines

CLOSURES Advances in Closure Quality Suppliers foresee 100% TCA detection, better oxygen management By Andrew Adams I n the highly competitive wine closures industry, suppliers continue to focus on improving quality control, facilities and their final products as they seek any edge in convincing wineries to pick their closures. Two cork suppliers are working to perfect automated systems to detect sensory defects they say will give them a 100% guarantee against faults; Amorim and O-I glass developed a twist-off cork, and alternative closure manufacturer Nomacorc continues to research how to improve oxygen management in the bottle and during the bottling process in general. In a Wines & Vines report from the August 2012 issue (see "Closures War at a Standstill"), Dustin Mowe, the president of Portocork America, a subsidiary of cork giant Amorim Group, described developing an automated process for detecting cork taint as the industry's search for the Holy Grail. "The most exciting thing to the hit the industry in the past five years will be this cork-by-cork testing machine," he said. But as Portocork works to unveil its system, Cork Supply is developing its own automated screening technology. The firm already offers its DS100 "dry soak" inspection program to provide a 100% guarantee for cork orders. This process, however, is time consuming. Eliminating sensory and consistency faults Ana Cristina Mesquita, Cork Supply's head of research and development in Porto, Portugal, said the company's research team is developing the "DSX100" process 56 W in e s & V i ne s AU G U ST 20 13 A Cork Supply technician collects a sample for gas chromatography (GC) analysis to detect any sensory faults in a batch of corks. to eliminate sensory flaws and sort and classify individual corks by their external and internal structure to eliminate cork variation. "Our vision is to do individual cork testing, and to assure bottle by bottle, because every bottle has • n a cork-quality "arms race," so to speak, I to be assured for our customers," Portocork and Cork Supply are both aiming she said. to bring automated cork-taint detection Mesquita said that in 2012 systems online within the year. Cork Supply researchers devised DS100+, a non-destructive process • wens-Illinois and Amorim collaborated O for detecting TCA and other on the new "Helix," a cork that consumers sensory flaws in corks. The next twist and pop off a specially designed bottle. step is to automate that process at production speed and volume. "As • ork and synthetic suppliers are both stanC we speak, DS100+ is already real dardizing and classifying oxygen-transfer through our laboratory prototype, rates to try and help winemakers match yet at low throughput," Mesquita their wine styles with the right closures. said. But with the assistance of partner companies that specialize • omacorc continues its research into oxyN in analytics and robotics, she said the company is planning to unveil gen management at all stages of the winean industrial-level application by making process and may soon release new the end of the year. "We are very equipment for analyzing headspace oxygen. confident about the approach we are using. We are not developing a quality-control tool, we are developing something industrial." What they are finding is that each cork In addition to the DS100+, Mesquita has its own distinct structure, and there said the company is working on its X100 can be huge variation between corks process. The system uses a non-invasive made from the same production lot of analysis to provide information about the cork bark. The complex classification sysinternal structure of the cork. By using the tem is an attempt to take this variation, system, Cork Supply claims it is able to which has always been a challenge for the classify corks based on their external and cork industry, and categorize it and make internal structures. Data gleaned from the sense of it. method is being run through a computer Mesquita said the new system could ensystem to establish sorting parameters. able Cork Supply to offer wineries natural Highlights

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