Though the process of making wine can be quite complicated and arduous, the product itself is beautifully simple - fermented grapes. Well, that's what wine's supposed to be. However, on every bottle of wine you'll see another ingredient listed - "Sulfites."
Sulfites, which are the only artificial preservative in wine, are added to "prevent oxidization and maintain freshness." And though their antioxidant and antibacterial properties are critical for wine preservation, especially once bottled, sulfites do, in fact, distance wine from its natural state. (Not to mention the fact that they can effect people that suffer from severe asthma and they are often blamed, probably unfairly, for causing wine headaches).
But one Chicago startup has set out to address this problem, creating an innovative device that removes sulfites and returns wine to its purest form.
Üllo, which went live this week after a successful Kickstarter campaign last summer, is a small, colander-like filter that uses a patent-pending polymer to selectively remove sulfites. The product, which was developed by CEO and co-founder James Kornacki, who also holds a PhD in organic chemistry from Northwestern University, filters the sulfites from any bottle of wine through a process dubbed Selected Sulfite Capture.
Explained Kornacki, "[The device] is a sponge, almost. It absorbs sulfite by forming bonds directly to sulfite, but it does not interact with anything else in the wine."
The Üllo team set out to raise $100,000 for its Kickstarter campaign last summer and ended up with over $300,000 from nearly 2,200 wine drinkers. The product is now available on the company's site for $79.99 and can come with a Carafe set ($129.99) or a Decanter set ($149.99). Also, Üllo's filters are optimized to purify one bottle of wine and costs around $3 each to replace.
Seeing Üllo come to life, from concept to commercialization, has been incredibly gratifying for me and my team," said Kornacki. "As a scientist at heart, it’s been rewarding to test and validate the hypothesis that consumers care about the health value of wine."
(Images via Üllo)
