Fete Lifestyle Magazine May 2018 - Wellness | Page 30

Do You Know Üllo?

This

Revolutionary Purifier Is

Allowing

Millions to

Enjoy Wine

Again!

nspired by his aunt’s sensitivity to wine, entrepreneur James Kornacki created a revolutionary product that filters out sulfites, which is estimated to affect approximately 3 million Americans sensitive to these chemicals.

Üllo is the first and only product that can remove sulfites selectively from wine. At 28 years old and halfway through his graduate program at Northwestern University, Kornacki realized he could solve a problem he’d

been thinking about for some

time, ever since his aunt

turned away wine at a

Christmas party when he was twelve. His quest started only

a few years after sulfites

became federally regulated in

the USA as a food additive,

where their use as a preser-

vative was banned entirely

from meat and produce

following thirteen deaths

linked to chemicals.

I

Of course, Kornacki wasn’t drinking at age 12, but when he hit grad school that obviously had changed. One night he noticed a “contains sulfites” label on a bottle of chardonnay and he immediately thought of his aunt. He knew that sulfites were an essential part of winemaking and their contribution keeps wine from turning into vinegar. However, that night it struck him that if sulfites

were added as a preservative,

then their job was done

the moment the tap

was off the box of wine

or the cork was removed from the bottle.

After his light bulb moment, Kornacki, who holds a doctorate in organic chemistry, took 18 months to develop the Selective Sulfite Capture™ polymer resin. In fact, he did the research out of his apartment and literally had a chemistry lab set up in his kitchen, and just like that, Üllo was born.