How do bottles get corked

Winemaker, daughter of a brewmaster and life-long Green Bay Packers fan. Corks czar since Head winemaker since Stay connected and receive exclusive invitations, news and 3, rewards points. Back to The Journey of Jordan. August 2, by Maggie Kruse Share:. There are several critical steps in the winemaking process to ensure the highest quality and integrity when bottling wine, both before and during the filling of wine bottles: Before Wine Bottling Every December, glass bottles are ordered.

All ml bottles for Jordan wines are made in California; large-format bottles are made in France and Italy, the countries with the most experience and volume. Every February, wine corks are ordered from Portugal and undergo a rigorous quality control process as noted in our blog about how wine corks are made and tested. But cork is more than the recalcitrant barrier between you and your booze.

And though new advances in winemaking technology mean that screw caps and artificial corks can work as well as the natural stuff, cork trees and their history are critically important, especially as climate change affects wine regions, growing seasons, and life cycles globally.

Like wine, cork comes from a living, breathing organism: Quercus suber, or the cork oak. Amidst the frenzied yearly cycle of the wine industry, these evergreen oaks move like sloths, slowly expanding and growing the bark, known as orange cork. With an average lifespan of years, each tree can provide thousands of bottle stoppers when cared for properly. The short version of the cork life cycle goes like this: Happy cork trees grow to age 25 in semi-arid forests surrounded by other animal and plant life on the Iberian peninsula and North Africa.

After that, skilled cork harvesters use axes to slice off the outer bark of the tree, leaving its inner wood intact and undamaged. Then, the planks of cork bark are dried, sorted, and processed. Cork is a natural product derived from trees, meaning that, regardless of sanitation practices, there is always going to be some bacteria in its pores. Cork taint is what happens when an enzymatic reaction between chlorophenol — a flaw that can occur naturally inside cork — and fungus.

When these substances interact, they create a compound called TCA. When this chemical compound makes airborne contact with wine, it destroys its aromatics.