AMORIM STEPS UP TCA BATTLE

(TheDrinksBusiness) - Amorim, the world’s largest cork manufacturer, is due to roll out its latest weapon in the battle against cork taint this September.

Working in partnership with a UK firm specialising in gas chromatography analysis , Amorim is developing an industrial-scale prototype which will allow it to test individual corks for the trichloroanisole (TCA) compounds responsible for “corked” wine.

The current gas chromatography system takes 14 minutes to analyse a single cork sample, making it impractical for large scale use outside the laboratory. Even so, Amorim’s 15 machines already allow it to test 16,000 samples in this way each month.

By contrast, the latest prototype is able to analyse one cork every 20 seconds, enabling Amorim to check up to 1.5 million of the 3.6 billion corks it produces every year.

“It’s not much but it’s a beginning,” acknowledged Amorim oenologist Paulo Lopes, who explained that the technology would initially be focused on the company’s highest quality corks.

Preliminary testing shows the machine’s ability to detect 100% of corks with more than 5 nanograms (parts per trillion) of TCA per litre, although this rate currently drops to 88% for corks with TCA levels of 5-2ng/litre, at which level the compound can still be detected by humans. However, confirmed Lopes, “We’re working to reach 100% on this range too.”