Cork Harvest 2016
We are coming to the end of the cork from 2015 harvest and look forward eagerly to the 2016 harvest. With the quality of the raw bark improving year on year for the last five years, due to better forest practices, we are anticipating some very nice cork this year. Our sensory test data from 2015 cork was 11% better than the 2014 cork.
Sensory versus TCA testing
ProCork has always used a combination of both tests simply because TCA is not the only cork taint that effects wine. Other examples of cork taints are 1 octen-3ol and furan. In 2016 we experimented with a sensory elimination technique where every cork is tested and individual corks with perceptible sensory taints are eliminated. Obviously this is suitable for only the very highest grades of cork where the expense can be justified.
Oxygen Transmission Rate
and
ProCork’s Selective Membrane
A major benefit of using ProCork’s specifically designed selective membrane technology with natural or technical cork is that the oxygen transmission rate is tightened and will always land in the optimum zone, where neither oxidation nor reduction will predominate. The graph below is from independent sensory data on bottles stored two year, the research was done by AWRI.
There will be more on this subject in future newsletters.
