Bottle of Chinon Blanc from Baudry-Dutour sealed with a screwcap

Interesting comments from Hervé Lalau on Vinocamp and its cork sponsors here on his Chroniques Vineuses.

2008 Casa de Santar, Dão

On the way out to Lisbon I have a brief chat with Fiona Beckett, the Guardian's wine correspondent who was also headed out to Lisbon but not on the same flight. Fiona was on a cork press trip, which doubtless aims to convince those on the trip that cork is the best closure for wine, that the problem of TCA has been solved and that if we don't continue to use cork it will be an ecological disaster as the native lynx, llamas, red squirrels and probably the real Loch Ness monster will be driven to extinction if the cork forests cease to be. I'm sure that Fiona will recognise this clap-trap for what it is.

I arrived in Lisbon in time to pop down to the local supermarket to buy a few things for dinner including of course some wine. Unfortunately when I came to try to open the bottle of 2008 Casa de Santar it was impossible to move the extraordinarily tight cork. Worried that if I tried too hard that I would break the top of the bottle, I started to cut small sections out of the top of the cork until eventually I was able to ease the cork out with a corkscrew.

Although it was worth effort as the 2008 Casa de Santar has very attractive round herbal fruit, it would have been much easier if it had been closed with a screwcap.

Casa de Santar – Dão

See here David Cobbold's polemic against the PR tactics used by the cork industry that he posted on Les 5 du Vin on Monday.

White Chinon from Baudry-Dutour closed with screwcap

'Here are my views on the "environmental" side of the cork issue. I did not try to make a very elegant text (not to be reproduced as such), but the ideas are there.

The « environmental issue ».

First of all, it is very difficult to find adequate data. And, when it is available, it is so biassed by the sponsor of the study that you can question its validity. So, I shall stick to the ideas, not their figures.

“Against” the aluminum: it takes electricity to extract the metal from bauxite. That is true.

Objection: once aluminum is available, it is very easy to recycle. You just don’t recycle cork.

“Pro” oak bark: it keeps local manpower at work and maintains the forest.

Objection: the number of manual workers actually involved in the collection of the bark (once every 8-12 years or so on any individual tree), and the number involved in “keeping the forest tidy” is very small indeed.

Moreover, most places (see Alentejo) where the cork-oak is found are no forests any more. You find the trees in clusters amongst other agricultural activities (wheat for instance).

The transportation issue

The volume (in bulk) for corks and screw-caps is similar, from the manufacturer to the end-user. But cork is heavier (marginally so, I admit).

Aluminum (raw material), when journeying between the production site and the manufacturer, takes very little room indeed. Cork needs a lot of volume, even unprocessed. And the places in the world where it is harvested are scarce and very concentrated (Portugal amongst others).

The air pollution issue

Manual workers invade the places of harvest with diesel vehicles and use combustion engine driven tools in a plenty (mostly two-stroke). By and large, they need to cover a lot of kilometers (from one collection site to the other)

The bark treatment issue

Suffices it to read the producers’ own site and take a look at the steps needed in the manufacturing of final corks: it is water and chemistry (chlorine) from one end to the other.

As a summary: yes, extracting aluminum from its ore demands electricity but recycling decreases this disadvantage. No, cork-oak forest for the purpose of collecting the bark is NOT an activity with sustainable advantages.'

See my recent post on screwcaps here.