An un-named major South Australian wine company is set to test a microwave-based sterilisation technique virtually to eliminate cork taint by heating the cork with electromagnetic waves, a process which forces out chemical contaminants and kills any microbes present. The resultant DELFIN corks (which stands for Direct Environment Load Focussed Inactivation, in case you couldn’t guess) will be available to Australian wineries in 2000. We watch with interest.



