Assay for identifying tainted corks
Europe's wine and cork industry incur losses of almost €1,000 million a year as a result of corks becoming tainted. Cork taint causes the undesirable smells or tastes found in a bottle of wine. Unfortunately, this spoilage can usually only be detected following the bottling, ageing and opening of the wine. In response to this challenge, the INNOCUOUS project was set up to enable the cork sector protect its market share and to promote a mainly European natural product. The consortium developed new techniques, including on-the-line quality control with immunosensors to make the production of stopper corks taint free. The main cause of cork taint is the presence of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA) in the wine. The INNOCUOUS team developed an Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) methodology for TCA detection of the water used for boiling corks. The ELISA technique had a 1-10 parts per trillion detection limit and a shelf life of three months. The period of time which elapsed between introducing the water sample to establishing a result was 80 minutes. No interference of trichlorophenol was found in concentrations up to 4 parts per million. The implementation of the methodology would result in a cost of €0.0003 per stopper for the cork industry and prevent 100% of cases of contamination.
