Artificial cork made from a plant based polymer.

Artificial cork. With a similar structure to cork but made from a plant based polymer. It has the advantage that it will not "cork" the wine while still being bio degradable. The stoppers that have been traditionally used in wine bottles have been made from the bark of the Cork Oak ~Quercus suber.

While it has many advantages including allowing the wine to "breath" a fungi in the bark can give an unpleasant taste to the wine - it becomes "corked". Screw tops and plastic bungs have been the alternative stopper but both prevent the wine from breathing and have been largely rejected by higher price producers. This "cork" answers many of these problems. It is made from a plant based polymer; the internal structure allows the wine to breath; it can be recycled; it does not host fungi that, reacting with chlorides in winery sanitation / sterilization products, that produces TCA (2,4,6 - trichloroanisole) that taints the wine; it has a user life of up to 25 years