CLOSURE ARRANGEMENT AND A METHOD OF CLOSING AND/OR

STOPPERING A WINE BOTTLE

TECHNOLOGICAL FIELD This invention relates to bottle stoppers and more particularly a wine bottle closure arrangement with improved gas control and permeability features that may be used in conjunction with more conventional wine bottle stoppers.

BACKGROUND ART

Traditionally bottles have a long, narrow neck compared to the main body portion of the bottle and are stoppered by pressing a compressible type closure into the bottleneck. This compressible closure may be synthetic or a natural cork closure and conventional means are used to first compress the closure, insert into the neck, so that subsequently thereafter the re-expanded closure provides for a sealing arrangement between the contents of the bottle and the external environment.

More recently there has been a tendency to move away from the compressible closures that are a natural cork type because of the problems associated with wine tainting.

More recently a releasable screw cap that contains a tin faced wadding inside the screw cap has an almost perfect seal of the contents of a wine bottle from the ambient environment around it in which the bottle may find itself during maturing and storage.

Nonetheless, while the screw cap provides an almost perfect seal against oxygen ingress, this seal has also proved to be one of the faults of the screw caps and while it is highly desirable to have almost no oxygen ingress for certain types of wines, this does not apply to other wine styles. For example, in sparkling wine it is desirable that no gas exchange takes place between the interior of the bottle and the environment. White wine correlates only minimal gas exchange whereas red wine needs a certain level of gas exchange to achieve maturity. As you can see the closure device, as discussed above, does not offer or permit some type of adjustability of the desired gas exchange by way of production conditions or arrangement.

However by puncturing the membrane with a controlled size aperture oxygen ingress can be controlled microscopically. While it is possible for certain synthetic stoppers to have their chemical properties adjusted which may allow a certain degree of gas exchange, there are other practical considerations that one needs to consider of the properties of the closure other than simply gas exchange.

Hence, by adjusting the properties of the synthetic closure to a more preferred gas exchange capability may regrettably remove the adequate compressibility and elasticity of the closure device in that it no longer provides a leak proof sealing of the bottle.

As explained above, while the nature and content of the composition of the closure can be adjusted by making it denser to limit the gas exchange, this means that the closure device cannot be produced simply and at a low cost.

Therefore, there remains a need in the relevant art of stoppering wine bottles for a closure device or arrangement that can be produced simply and at a low cost and allow us to permit potential adjustment of the desired gas permanentability between the environment and interior of the bottle and also by perforating the membrane with a controlled size aperture, or by slotting the membrane periphery to a depth greater than the bottle ID variable oxygen ingress can be achieved. . SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly there is provided a bottle closure arrangement for sealing wine bottles, said arrangement including; a synthetic stopper of a generally cylindrical shape and of a selected

diameter, where the end portions are adapted for insertions into the neck of a wine bottle to make the bottle leak proof; a gas exchanging controllable membrane wherein the membrane is

adapted for a gas to membrane seal about the circumpheral top edge of the bottleneck, such that the synthetic stopper provides for the physical closure or sealing of the contents of the bottle whereas the gas exchange controller membrane with or without assistance from the synthetic stopper controls and adjusts the desirable gas exchanges that takes place between the interior of the bottle and the environment. In a further form of the invention the bottle arrangement introduced above replaces the synthetic stopper of a generally cylindrical shape with a

conventional screw cap wherein said screw cap may or may not include tin wadding.

In a further form of the invention the bottle closure arrangement as introduced above replaces the synthetic stopper of a generally cylindrical shape with a conventional plastic cap.

As introduced above, whatever form the invention takes what is central to the invention is that there is a physical barrier to prevent wine from coming out of the bottle along with the use of the gas controllable exchange member which seals itself across the top aperture of the bottle. As the person skilled in the art will appreciate there have been many inventions that have come and gone which include an attempt to place barrier films in conjunction with more traditional stoppers. For example, barrier films have been placed at the ends of both natural cork and synthetic closures to either improve the sealability in relation to minimum oxygen transmission or to prevent taints or odours from entering the wines. Nonetheless, a problem with adding films or membranes to these kinds of insertable closures, is that when the closure is compressed into configuration for appropriate insertion into the neck of the bottle and then expanded

subsequently thereafter in order to create the leak proof seal within the bottle, this expansion and contraction of the conventional closure makes it very difficult for adhesions of the membrane to remain with the closure.

In many cases the bottom membrane comes away from the closure and floats into the wine which, as expected, would be totally unacceptable as a point of sale characteristic to consumers.

While there has been use of barrier membranes for sealing foods in other industries such as yoghurts, juices, baby foods which are all sealed with one of a variety of barriers, the problems with use of a single barrier film on top of a wine bottle is that the membranes are delicate and the seal can be breached if it is overloaded.

As the person skilled in the art will appreciate 750 ml of wine pressing on a 24 mm diameter membrane when the bottles are inverted can be more that sufficient to break the seal and flood the area with wine.

Still further, if the full bottle of wine is not consumed there is no re-sealability with the membrane.

Advantageously, this invention has been able to bring together two conventional ways of sealing fluids to provide a very new and unique and quite unexpected application which has solved a centuries old problem of being able to get a low cost, consistent, tamper evident, universal, and conveniently sealable closure arrangement for wine bottles, that not only provides a physical barrier to make the contents of the bottle for the most part leak proof, but at the same time where required be able to adjust limits or totally restrict the exchange of gasses between the interior of the bottle and the environment.

It is now no longer required to unsatisfactorily alter the composition of the synthetic closure, for example, making it more dense or the like which by its own nature would dramatically increase the costs of the product. The actual density and even the longitudinal length of the synthetic closure is now of no critical importance for it is the synthetic closure which is responsible only for acting only as the physical barrier.

Advantageously in this invention, with the introduction of the gas exchange controllable membrane, the selection of the particular membrane applied, one can decide the barrier action of the closure device with respect to gasses, for example, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and oxygen

The control of the gas exchange will be dependent on the type of membrane selected such as tin or aluminium for complete exclusion or multi-layered films with known barrier effects for offering limited or selective gas exchange. Preferably the use of a screw cap closure covering a membrane to a glass seal will either completely exclude oxygen from entering the bottle or allow a selected amount thereof.

Preferably this control is used by the use of a ^' membrane such as tin or aluminium for the complete exclusion or for some inclusion of oxygen and other gasses, the use of a multi-layer film with known barrier product properties, which may or may not be combined with the style of wadding used in

conventional screw cap configurations. In order to describe the invention in greater detail, a preferred embodiment will be presented with the assistance of the accompanying illustrations.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Figure 1 is the perspective view of a conventional natural cork closure arrangement.

Figures 2a, 2b and 2c show a conventional synthetic closure of a generally cylindrical shape being used to close the bottle with varying density in order to control gas exchange between the interior of the bottle and the environment.

Figures 3a, 3b and 3c show various schematic representations wherein barrier films are placed at the ends of both natural cork and synthetic closures to improve the sealability in relation to minimum oxygen transgression or to prevent taints or odours entering the wine.

Figure 4 shows an expanded representation of the bottle closure arrangement of this invention that includes in this preferred embodiment a synthetic stopper of a generally cylindrical shape along with the gas exchanging controllable membrane.

Figure 5 is a similar schematic representation as illustrated in Figure 4, however, in this embodiment the synthetic stopper is fixed in place in the neck of the bottle and the gas exchange controllable membrane is sealed about the circumpheral edge of the bottle neck.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Referring now to the drawings in greater detail where there is provided in Figure 1 a representation explaining the use of natural cork shown generally as 10 as a > means of a closure for wine. As depicted in Figure 1 the wine bottle 12 uses natural cork 14 to stop the bottle 12.

The cork itself being a natural product has oxygen permanentability of which is regrettably random and can vary but the permanentability is. reflected in the gas exchange shown by arrows 16 and 18 in the illustration.

As a person skilled in the art would realise the high end of wine closed with natural cork can oxidise in a matter of weeks, causing the wine to turn brown, lose its freshness and become undrinkable.

The other major issue with natural cork is the underlying problem of

trichlorannisole taint.

This taint gives the wine a mouldy, musty, wet newspaper taste. Taint is approximately in 5%-10% of all wine closed using the conventional method shown in Figure 1.

Figures 2a-, 2b and 2c show use of the more conventional synthetic stopper of a generally cylindrical shape and shown respectively as 22, 30 and 34 in each of the illustrations 2a, 2b and 2c.

In Figure 2a the synthetic closure is of a high density and therefore there is the ability to control gas exchange to limiting the amount as required and as illustrated by arrows 26. This dense closure still does not have sufficiently low gas permeability to give long term, i.e. greater than 4 years life to wine.

Nonetheless, the problem with very dense synthetic stoppers is that even the simplest task of using a corkscrew 24 can make the removal of the cork 22 from the corkscrew 24 particularly problematic.

Also, as the person skilled in the art will appreciate, increasing the density of the closure will bring significant increases in costs and also the ability to compress and re-expand the closure during the bottling process which then becomes particularly troublesome as the density increases.

Figures 2b and 2c show how the respective synthetic closures 30 and 34 can vary the amount of gas exchange 32 and 36 depending on the density of the stopper.

While stopper 34 may have a low density and therefore cost effective, the point to be made is that the lack of density limits its sealing capabilities and also increases the ability of much unwanted gas exchange between the bottle 20, interior contents 21 and the outside environment. Figures 3a, 3b and 3c simply provide another prior art means in which a wine bottle can be closed which includes having either a natural cork or a synthetic closure 38 with barrier films 40a and 40b adhered to the respective ends.

These barrier films with or without combination effects of the natural cork or the synthetic closure 38 allow for a certain amount of permanentability or

transgression of selected gasses if required.

Nonetheless, as introduced above, the introduction of the barrier films 40a and 40b at the respective ends of the closure 38 becomes problematic when placed in the bottle as the process of compressing the closure 38 and then having it re- expanded to provide a leak proof seal, means that there is a real possibility that the barrier films 40a and 40b may lose their adhesion to the closure 38 and fall into the bottle 39.

It is also quite common for corkscrews to work there way through the closure 38 and dislodge the bottom barrier film 40b into the contents of the wine.

Figure 4 and Figure 5 show the preferred embodiment of this invention wherein the wine bottle 56 and the neck of the bottle 58 is able to receive a synthetic closure 48 which is of a generally cylindrical shape and has a selected diameter with end portions which will allow it to be inserted into the neck 58 of the bottle 56.

It will be the synthetic closure in this preferred embodiment which provides the physical barrier, therefore the means in which to provide a leak proof seal of the interior contents of the bottle.

However, it is membrane 52 that allows gas exchangeability.

As discussed above numerous times, in order to solve the problem of a straight membrane to glass seal, this invention uses a combination of either an insertable closure, as shown in this preferred embodiment or alternatively a screw cap and a membrane, plastic cap and a membrane or any other device which will give a physical barrier to prevent the wine from coming out of the bottle.

For instance, a synthetic insertable closure provides an excellent seal which prevents the closure from moving out of the bottle when the wine is heated to 35° Celsius, this prevents the closure from being sucked into the bottle when vacuums are less than -20 kpa are used and conventional bottling equipment is used to remove oxygen from the head space between the wine and the closure.

Advantageously the addition of the barrier membrane seal to the glass at the top of the closure on the outside of the bottle means, that oxygen ingress through both the membrane and the closure can be controlled.

The choice membrane permeability and wadding permeability can then be selected to allow some oxygen ingress if required.

Advantageously, the use of the membrane also provides an excellent tamper evident seal.