Effects of cork on the evolution of bottled wines

Supervisors: Prof. Piergiorgio Comuzzo and Prof. Donatella Peressini

Project description:
Cork stoppers represent a traditional part of wine packaging in many countries and have a number of advantages, including positive sustainable and ecological aspects, as well as the ability of establishing a “constructive path” with wine, actively participating in its post-bottling evolution. In the last few decades, the cork manufacturing technology and techniques for testing corks have been improved so that the cork industry can now ensure a better quality control in relation to the management of oxygen permeability and the presence of haloanisoles, in particular 2,4,6-tricholoroanisole (TCA). Nevertheless, sometimes some bottled wine batches appear to be subjected to quick and random oxidations or unexpected evolutions, despite using cork stoppers that successfully passed the usual standard quality tests.
The overarching aim of the present research project concerns the active role played by cork closures in wine evolution, in both positive and negative terms. Specifically, the objectives of this research project can be outlined in two main topics of investigation, i.e., the assessment of the active role of cork in unexpected random wine oxidation phenomena and the assessment of the TCA partitioning between cork and wine and its equilibrium.
It is expected that the results of this research project will contribute to understanding the interaction mechanisms between cork and wine and to identifying criticalities in the cork manufacturing industry that might affect cork quality and performance. Results will be valuable from both scientific and practical point of view to both cork industry practitioners and winemakers, potentially improving existing predictive tools or developing new ones for a better cork quality evaluation in the near future.

Biography and contacts:
Anna Bortolini was born in Bologna (Italy) in 1998.
In 2020 she obtained a Bachelor degree in Agricultural and Agroenvironmental Sciences at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano (110/110 cum laude).
In 2023 she obtained an MSc degree in Viticulture, Enology and Wine Markets at the University of Udine (110/110 cum laude).
In January 2024 she started the doctoral course at the Ph.D. school “Food Science” at the University of Udine.

E-mail: bortolini.anna@spes.uniud.it
Phone: + 39 0432 55 8376