| Neutrocork® is the latest addition to Amorim's portfolio of high quality cork closures.
A high-tech, competitively priced stopper, Neutrocork® is designed for early-drinking still wines, light sparkling wines and beer.
Since its launch in 2001, winemakers have embraced Neutrocork® as a natural cork alternative to synthetic stoppers. Global sales have risen significantly in the past 12 months and are expected to more than double over the next two to three years.
With a consistent diameter and regular shape, Neutrocork® creates an excellent seal and performs well on the bottling line and on the shelf. Its smooth good looks also make it attractive to consumers.
Because Neutrocork® is individually moulded from fine cork granules of uniform size, it shows very little variation in diameter. This increases production efficiency and so reduces the cost to winemakers - an essential characteristic for a stopper in the price-sensitive, high-turnover market sector.
All granules used in Neutrocork® are made from stopper-quality corkwood and treated with Amorim's proprietary ROSA process to minimise the risk of off-flavours.
Wines sealed under Neutrocork® retain significantly more sulfur dioxide after 15 months than those under leading plastic stoppers, according to shelf-life trials conducted by Amorim Cork Australia. Sulfur dioxide helps to protect a wine from developing undesirable 'oxidised' characters.
Neutrocork® is available in all wine-producing countries. France is the largest market with wineries in Burgundy, Bordeaux, Côtes de Rhône and Provence using millions of the corks in wines intended for local consumption and export.
The US is one of the top five markets for Neutrocork®, with other New World countries quickly adopting this innovative closure.
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| Sixty national wine show awards and 953 medals - 190 of them gold - make Ed Carr Australia's most decorated winemaker.
The awards include seven consecutive Amorim Cork trophies for Best Sparkling Wine at the prestigious Royal Melbourne Wine Show.
Group sparkling winemaker for Hardy Wines, Carr and his team have dominated the category in recent years and in the process led a revolution in sparkling wine quality in Australia.
Twenty-two sparkling wines make up the Hardy Wines portfolio, part of Constellation Brands. They include the award-winning Arras, Yarra Burn and Sir James classic sparkling wine styles, as well as Leasingham sparkling shiraz, a distinctively Australian style.
Carr became involved in winemaking while employed as a microbiologist at Seaview in the 1980s and joined Hardy Wines in 1994.
He attributes the improvement in wine quality in recent years to the quality of fruit used for premium wines. More and more of the classic varieties - chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier - are sourced from cold climate vineyards.
While noting that some producers are experimenting with inert closures after disgorge, Carr believes that cork age is a very important factor in the development of sparkling wine. All Hardy premium sparkling wines have a minimum of six months on cork before release.
"In my view there are two development stages in sparkling wine. One is when it's matured on yeast lees, straight after secondary fermentation, and that is under a crown seal," he said.
"But the second stage, and just as important, is the ageing under cork. I think that good quality cork actually has a positive effect on the development of the wine."
Carr welcomed efforts to improve cork quality so that Hardy Wines could maintain its policy of maturation of wine on cork with confidence.
"I went to Portugal last year, which was the first time in a while, and I think the whole technology of cork manufacture has improved by quantum leaps in the last 10 years," he said.
"I believe the resultant quality of cork is improving quite rapidly.
"Going right back to the forest - forest selection, storage, selection of the bark, boiling and the additional processes to remove any TCA that might be there. All of those phases are important in ensuring the whole quality assurance trail.
"I'm very hopeful that the new technologies being introduced now will reduce the frequency of cork taint to negligible amounts.
"I don't know how long it will take for the full implementation of these new processes, but we're certainly seeing improvements now." |
