The company Üllo was born halfway through James Kornacki’s graduate program at Northwestern University (Kornacki holds a doctorate in Organic Chemistry), when he realized he could solve a problem he’d been thinking about for some time, ever since his aunt turned wine away at a Christmas party when he was 12. “Can’t have wine because of the sulfites, doctor said so,” she announced. This was only a few years after sulfites became federally regulated in the USA as a food additive, where their use as a preservative was banned entirely from meat and produce following thirteen deaths linked to the chemicals.
At 12 Kornacki wasn’t drinking, but by the time he hit grad school that had changed and one night he noticed a “contains sulfites” label on his box of chardonnay (he hadn’t yet graduated to bottles), and he thought of his aunt. Sulfites remain an essential part of winemaking and they are what keep wine from turning into vinegar. It struck Kornacki that night that if sulfites are added as a preservative, then their job was over the moment he twisted the tap on that box of wine. He thought, “If I could then remove these chemicals, shouldn’t I? Would my aunt be able to drink wine again?” This was a problem of chemistry. It took him 18 months to develop the Selective Sulfite Capture™ polymer resin that they use in their products today.
In fact, Kornacki did all of the research and development for the Selective Sulfite Capture filters out of his apartment. He literally had a chemistry lab set up in his kitchen as he had to keep all the research out of the university since it was separate from his grad work.
Kornacki got his first real start when he won $5000 from the University’s business pitch competition. He found tremendous support in Northwestern’s Farley Center for Entrepreneurship. Through their network he connected with all of his initial investors who collectively contributed roughly $500k to get Üllo started. His business and team grew from there. “Exactly two years after I won that $5000 check, we had made $5 million in revenue — three orders of magnitude for those counting,” Kornacki shares. Üllo has now made wine more accessible and enjoyable to people all over the world, including his aunt. Visit https://ullowine.com/.
