Food Contamination: Wine Bottle Contaminant

 Although Read consulting is a failure analysis lab, Failure experts at Read Consulting have worked with numerous food packaging companies to determine the cause of food contamination and work with food packaging companies to correct the problems they are encountering. In this case, a claim was made that a mobile wine bottling line was damaging the natural corks during bottling of unfiltered red wine and that pieces of cork were entering the wine and reducing its value. The winery had examined unopened wine bottles and found floating particles. This was the basis for their claim. For failure analysis, twenty four randomly selected representative bottles were documented, filtered and the filtrate was examined. Firstly, not one cork showed damage; secondly, only one bottle had a piece of cork in it. The contaminant was shown to be tartrate  (Potassium Bitartrate) crystals. This is a natural bi-product of fermentation and aging of wine. These crystals can be removed with cold stabilization and filtration. However, the wine in question was intentionally not filtered; therefore, these particles are unavoidable. There was no contribution from the bottler. This is an example where a complaint was filed before a proper scientific evaluation had been performed.