aging – Michmutters

In news that will strike fear into the heart of anyone who has struggled with a corkscrew, the traditional wine closure — cork — is making a comeback.

While screw caps have dominated the Australian wine industry for decades, a new generation of winemakers is going old school.

Noah Ward is a brand ambassador at Unico Zelo, which produces wines in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills.

He said making wine more sustainable was behind the push to put corks back into bottles.

“You can’t grow a screw cap. It’s a finite resource that you have to mine … but you can grow cork trees til the cows come home,” Mr Ward said.

“There’s also that little plastic polymer that’s not necessarily good for the planet [because it] won’t biodegrade very well.”

Mr Ward said in addition to its environmental benefits, corks also helped wines develop more naturally.

A man pours a glass of red wine at a dimly lit wooden bar, an orange wine is in the foreground. — Unico Zelo brand ambassador Noah Ward says he knows of about 50 winemakers of his generation who were using cork.(Supplied: Unico Zelo)

“Our business started in the 2010s, which was a pretty big shift in the wine industry with the emergence of natural wine or lo-fi wine, minimal intervention, wine. Most of the producers of that ilk were using corks or other products like that ,” he said.

“There are things that screw caps can do better than corks, they can keep wine protected from oxygen for a long period of time, so they can age a lot longer.

“But I like to see a wine develop quicker, so I can actually drink it [sooner rather] than wait 25 years for my semillon to finally get to that point where it’s not extremely high in acid.”

Why did corks fall out of fashion?

General manager Dan Simmons of Australian cork manufacturer Vinocor said the change came about because of a chemical called trichloroanisole or TCA.

“The term is ‘corked’,” he said.

“TCA can make the wine smell like wet cardboard—it basically ruins the wine.

“Back in the 90s, around 5 per cent of wines were being tainted by this chemical compound.”

In response to this, Mr Simmons said Australian wine producers started shifting to screw caps in the early 2000s.

“The cork industry went from supplying nearly all of the market to a position where probably only 10 per cent of the market was filled with cork,” he said.

Then in 2004 Diam created a solution.

“They took some technology that was used by the coffee industry to remove caffeine from coffee beans and adapted that to the cork industry to remove TCA and other flavour-modifying molecules,” Mr Simmons said.

“It also solved the other problem of bottle variation because the Diam cork is actually granulated cork, and then it’s put back together. So they’re very consistent as it removed the problem of random oxidisation.”

But the local industry had moved on.

Three corks on a white background. — The Diam cork is made from granulated offcuts, pieced together with a carbon-based glue.(Supplied: Vinocor)

Mr Simmons said while cork was experiencing a resurgence, making up about 15 per cent of closures of Australian wines, more companies needed to use it to make recycling programs effective.

“The secondary uses are immense,” he said.

“[Cork is in] the soles of shoes, in building products, and sporting goods such as the inside of cricket balls.”

Mr Simmons said Vinocor hoped to work with competitors to encourage the use of corks more widely.

“Sustainability is very important for the wine industry. We’re signatories to the Australian packaging covenant, so we need to find ways to make sure that our packaging products are recyclable or compostable,” he said.

“Certainly in other markets around the world, like in America and in Europe, collecting corks for recycling is just normal practice because they have the critical mass.”

A wine bottle with a cork and glasses on the back of a white ute — Unico Zelo lists packaging materials, such as corks and palettes, in online marketplaces or donates them to local kindergartens.(Supplied: Unico Zelo)

not corkscrew? No problem

Mr Ward said once consumers understood the benefits of cork, they were on board.

But ensuring they had the tools to open wines with this closure had been a challenge.

Last year Unico Zelo even ran a “sabre off” competition calling for customers to share videos on social media of them cutting open wine bottles.

A glass of white wine next to a cork on a corkscrew — The raw material of cork is taken from a cork oak, with the tree able to be harvested up to 15 times during its life.(Supplied: Vinocor)

“One of my favorite things in the world is trying to MacGyver open a bottle of wine,” Mr Ward said.

“You can even open wine with a shoe, I’ve done that a few times before, you can get tricky with drills… you can even use a spatula.”

“But I think now it’s becoming one of those things where if you’re into wine and you start buying stuff from interesting small producers you’re going to have to spend 10 bucks to buy a corkscrew.”

When Alison Taylor’s father lost the ability to walk she had no idea an over-the-counter vitamin was to blame.

Ms Taylor told ABC Radio Melbourne her father was diagnosed with vitamin B6 toxicity — a condition that can cause peripheral neuropathy, or nerve damage — after he was unknowingly consuming about 70 times the recommended daily intake for a man his age.

The 86-year-old was active and living independently until last year when Ms Taylor noticed the strength in her legs declining.

He was eventually admitted to hospital after losing the ability to walk.

“We took him to all sorts of different specialists. He’s had a number of consulting neurologists, he’s had MRIs, he’s had CT scans, everything you could think of to investigate why he was losing his mobility,” Ms Taylor said.

After a nine-week stint in hospital, Ms Taylor said one final test was carried out.

“They checked his B6 levels and to quote the doctor, ‘they were off the charts’,” she said.

double dose

Ms Taylor said about four years ago her father went to his GP where routine blood tests revealed he was deficient in B vitamins.

“[The GP] suggested he takes a mega-B supplement, so dad kept taking that,” Ms Taylor said.

“In his mega-B there were 50mg [of B6] and in his multivitamin there was also 50mg.”

Her father was also taking a magnesium supplement, which contained B6.

“Two of the breakfast cereals that Dad was eating everyday were fortified with B6,” she said.

Vitamin pills of different colors scattered on a bench. — The recommended daily intake of B6 is 1.7mg for men aged over 51.(ABC Health: Tegan Osborne)

Ms Taylor said it had been difficult watching her father decline.

“Twelve months ago he was driving. He’s now in aged care and in a wheelchair,” she said.

Her father has been in care for about six weeks to receive additional support and intensive physiotherapy to help rebuild his strength.

Ms Taylor said she was hopeful her father would start to regain his mobility in about six months’ time as his B6 levels returned to normal.

“There’s no suggestion he’ll start to walk as independently as he was before but potentially he won’t have to be in the wheelchair,” she said.

Condition rare but dangerous

RMIT University nutritional scientist and dietician Jessica Danaher said vitamin B6 toxicity was rare as excess B vitamins were generally flushed out by the body in the form of urine.

“However a toxic level could occur from taking too much B6 from supplements over the long-term,” Dr Danaher said.

“In rare cases, having a reduced kidney function as well as taking too much vitamin B6 may contribute to it gradually building up in the body.”

Dr Danaher said people generally received enough B6 through a “healthy and varied diet”.

“[It’s] found in a wide range of foods including meat, poultry, fish, eggs, beans and lentils, seeds and nuts, whole grains, vegetables — especially green and leafy types — and fruits,” she said.

Those who consumed high levels of alcohol, had an overactive thyroid, or were taking contraindicated medications could be more likely to develop a deficiency.

Mix of brightly colored vegetables — A good diet should provide adequate B6 requirements.(Flickr: Jeremy Keith)

“If you are concerned about the levels of nutrients in your blood speak with your GP,” Dr Danaher said.

The Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA) said it was aware of reports in Australia and overseas indicating peripheral neuropathy due to high levels of B6 consumption.

Products that contain more than 50mg are required to display a warning.

In 2020, the TGA said they were reviewing the problem, and the outcome might result in changes to the requirements for medication that contain B6.

Key points:

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories