June 2007
Pop…glug glug glug……don’t you love that sound on a warm summer evening, as the cork comes out of the chilled bottle of chardonnay…….then your friends come round and several bottles later, the corks end up in the bin.  But have you ever really wondered where the cork comes from?  I always did; I knew it was from the bark of a tree, but didn’t know where those trees grew, or that it takes 30 years to farm the first harvest off a newly planted cork tree.

History has it that a Benedictine monk called Dom Perignon first used cork in the neck of a bottle of sparkling wine in the 1600s; hitherto oiled rags and wood chips had done the trick.  Since then, the use of a cork in bottles, particularly for wine, has become the norm; in fact, we automatically call the stopper a ‘cork’.

Over 15 billion cork stoppers are produced and sold worldwide every year, to the wine industry.  They are processed from the bark harvested from cork oak woodlands that have grown in Western Mediterranean countries for thousands of years.  The wine industry is instrumental in sustaining the cork industry since the use of cork for bottle stoppers accounts for 70% of total cork production.

What is cork?
Cork is obtained by harvesting the outer layer of bark from the cork oak trees…Quercus suber. This is done in the summer, which is the most active phase of the tree’s annual growth cycle.  Phelogen is the name of the cell tissue that produces cork on the outer and inner bark layers.  Underneath the outer bark is the 'mother layer' which is the tissue that carries the nutrients to the tree itself; this is not removed during harvesting so that the cork regnerates after stripping.  The unique thick bark can be stripped every ten years without damaging the tree and harvesting is a highly skilled job involving the use of specially designed axes that make precise incisions in the bark.  Only dead tissue is removed during the process and once its bark has been removed, each cork oak is painted with a large white number to indicate when it was last stripped. The time period between each harvesting (9 to 12 years), allows the cork to grow to a size thick enough to make a wine stopper.  In natural forests cork trees are ready to be harvested from the age of 30 to 35 years and can continue to produce cork for about 150 years, sometimes longer.

Where does cork come from?
The cork oak tree grows right across the Western Mediterranean basin, from Portugal and Spain, through France, Tunisia and Morocco, Algeria, Italy and France covering approximately 2.7 million hectares and sustaining the incomes of more than 100,000 people.

Portugal houses a third of all the word’s cork trees and is the largest producer of this valuable natural resource.  In some areas of the country, like Monchique, where these pictures were taken, 80% of the population depends on cork for their income.  The cork oak forests, known as montado in Portuguese, and dehesa in Spain are ancient.  Over the centuries they have come to support a unique and well-integrated mix of agriculture, forestry, and pastoralism; acorns from the trees are used as animal feed and goats are regularly grazed amongst the forests, in addition to which olives trees growing in between the cork oaks support an industry of their own.  These cork oak habitats have been ranked amongst the most important in Europe and are listed in the EC Habitats Directive.

Throughout the Mediterranean basin the cork oak forests support a rich variety of wildlife, including some endangered species.  In Spain and Portugal the forests provide a habitat for the world's rarest big cat, the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus), and the Iberian imperial eagle (Aquila heliaca), while the entire crane population of Europe overwinters in this same region.  The cork oak forests of Tunisia are home to the Barbary deer (Cervus elaphus barbarus).  While the montados serve as a model of sustainability, in which local people use the natural resources around them without destroying their environment, this same environment can only survive for as long as people continue to cultivate it, which may only be for as long as the demand for cork remains high.

The threat to cork
In spite of an increase in global wine production since 2000, the cork stoppers market has not grown commensurately and in fact sales have decreased by some 18% in the five years from 2000 to 2005.  Portugal especially has experienced a major loss in revenue from cork sales, especially in exports to the USA and Australia.  Between 2000 and 2004 exports to USA fell by 30 million euros, and by 24 million euros in exports to Australia between 2002 and 2004. This trend is of particular concern since wine production in these countries increased during the same period.

There are two main factors that have cause this trend:

Firstly aggressive marketing to promote synthetic alternatives - plastic stoppers and screw tops.  Cheaper new world wines are designed to be consumed early with no need for ‘laying down’ or ageing; added to that an increase in production, particularly from places like South America, has put more wine on the market and thus there is a greater need to keep costs down in order to remain competitive. Plastic stoppers mimic cork, in appearance certainly, so it is difficult for consumers to differentiate between that and the real thing when buying their wine.

Secondly, the suggestion of the tainting of the wine from TCA using cork stoppers.  Hitherto this slightly mouldy taste was attributed solely to the use of corks as stoppers in wine bottles.  In fact, the taint comes from the combination of three sources: the cork stopper, the wine and the environment.  Halogenated phenols (highly toxic environmental pollutants) are found in the environment, due to the use of pesticides, sanitation materials and herbicides and these can be present in the wine during storage  in wooden containers, and before bottling.  Indeed even wines using plastic stoppers have been found to contain TCAs, so it would be wrong to only blame cork for this tainting.

Switching from the use of cork stoppers to plastic alternatives is increasing in many countries.  In Australia one in three bottles have plastic stoppers; in Argentina, the fifth largest wine producer in the world, plastic stoppers are only used for the export market particularly to the USA.  Home production still uses cork as it is felt it is the best product for a class wine, and indeed the tannin in the cork is thought to enhance the flavour of the wine.  However, should all vintners bow to the cost pressure, they could be endangering one of the last natural forest ecosystems in Western Europe, along with the culture and economy that has evolved with it over thousands of years.

The increasing use of synthetic alternatives to natural cork stoppers is not the only threat to the cork oak forests and the people and wildlife that depend on them.  Neglect allows the montados to fall into decay, and over the past thirty years, many of the village populations have migrated to urban centres;  the local communities that remain often take advantage of EU subsidies, which has in some cases led to forms of agriculture and forestry that are less than sympathetic to their environment. 

Large tracts of former Mediterranean cork oak forest are being replaced with plantations of eucalyptus and pine which, in contrast to the cork oak’s ability to partially resist fire, actually provide fuel to forest fires. The loss of the cork oak forests could spell catastrophe for the region's ecosystems.  It could also have dire consequences for Europe as a whole.  Where non-indigenous species have been introduced to Mediterranean forests, failure to adapt to local conditions and climate has in some cases led to desertification.  The indigenous cork oak forests across this entire region offer the only effective barrier against the desert’s northward trend. 

Cork is a truly sustainable product – renewable and biodegradable, (in the cork producing countries, cork is recycled and used for noticeboards, placemats, coasters, floor tiles and insulation materials) and harvesting is an entirely evironmentally friendly process during which not a single tree is cut down.  In a world of finite resources it is important to retain one of the most valuable examples of balance between nature and man.

It is inherently the responsibility of the cork and the wine industries to take action in order to maintain the existence of the cork oak forests; the wine industry in particular needs to consider the environmental and socio economic value of cork and the cork industry needs to work to eliminate the fear of TCA contamination.  And we wine drinkers must do our bit by only buying wines with cork stoppers; I hesitate to add that we must also drink more!

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