Niepoort adopts Legacy cork by Cork Supply

Legacy – Cork Supply’s newest innovation – has its first Portuguese partner as leading winemaker Dirk Niepoort adopts it for Niepoort Vinha do Carril.

Two icons of the Portuguese wine industry have joined forces, as Niepoort has become the first winery in the country to adopt Cork Supply’s Legacy cork. The union sees one of Portugal’s top unfortified wines – Niepoort Vinha do Carril 2023 – bottled using one of the country’s most innovative corks.

Cork Supply is a prominent player in Portugal’s cork industry, which accounts for around 50% of global production. Initially founded in 1981 to supply cork to the US market, it has grown significantly to handle most of the production chain, from raw material processing to quality control.

The company is particularly known for its technological advances to eliminate wine faults, of which Legacy is the most advanced.

Niepoort, meanwhile, is a fifth-generation winery based in the Douro. Founded in 1842, it has a long history of Port production, but under the leadership of Dirk Niepoort, it has pioneered unfortified production in the Douro.

Vinha do Carril is a recent, premium addition to the portfolio. Sourced from a 100-year-old vineyard in the Cima Corgo, it is a true field blend of native Portuguese varieties, as grown on the steep schist slopes of the Douro. As a wine that will benefit from long ageing in the bottle, the choice of closure is a key consideration for Niepoort Vinha do Carril – hence why Legacy has been selected.

“We are delighted that a trailblazer like Dirk Niepoort has chosen a cork that represents the pinnacle of natural closures,” says Jochen Michalski, founder of Cork Supply. “The Legacy is the perfect choice for winemakers who want to guarantee their wines can consistently be enjoyed exactly as they intended – now and in the decades to come.”

High-tech in an old industry

Although Portugal has been supplying corks for centuries, Legacy is underpinned by the latest technology. Specifically, the cork uses three processes to offer the ultimate assurance to Cork Supply customers.

Two of them are well-established weapons in the Cork Supply arsenal. Both DS100 and Vocus detect 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole (TCA), the compound responsible for cork taint.

DS100 – which stands for dry soak, 100% inspected – makes use of human expertise with highly trained, highly sensitive sensory specialists inspecting the product. Corks are placed in jars with a small amount of pure water, to release aromas. Should any fault be detected, the entire jar is discarded.

Vocus, on the other hand, is the technological solution. It releases volatile compounds from the corks, concentrates them and assesses them mechanically. Any incidence of TCA above 1 nanogram per litre results in rejection.

Cork Supply is so confident of these features that it guarantees the bottles secured with a Legacy cork: the company will buy back any bottle that shows TCA cork taint.

The third process is the most recent innovation. Exclusive to the Legacy cork, X100 electromagnetic imaging technology uses non-invasive scanning and carefully trained AI to protect against unwanted oxygen ingress.

The technology scans the interiors of corks, finding outliers in their structure as determined by years of data analysis. These anomalies, though invisible to the naked eye, can allow 5–10 times the normal level of oxygen to enter the cork. As this can dramatically affect the wine’s ageing, these corks are discarded.

Speaking after its launch last year, Michalski described Legacy as “the pinnacle of a decade of research.” He continued: “It raises the status of natural cork closures and the position of Cork Supply as an innovation leader in this field.”

Related news

Chanson Père et Fils on why Côte Chalonnaise is just 'the beginning'

Orma and Oreno: ‘Sometimes we take a little bit of the fashion world’

Technical director of Hospices de Nuits-Saint-Georges to retire after 35 years