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 It might seem of little consequence, but when you last bought a bottle of wine did it happen to have a natural cork, plastic stopper or screw cap? The apparent irrelevance of the subject is no laughing matter for the Portuguese cork industry and for the sake of sustainability. Over the last decade, the market share of cork products for the wine industry has declined dramatically. The value of cork is half of what it was 10 years ago and 85% of Australian wine and 45% of New Zealand’s are now under screw caps.

The truth is that the cork producers were blamed for the loss of market share. Cork taint wasn’t taken seriously and that made it easy for screw caps to take over. This problem occurs when a cork becomes contaminated with 2.4.6-trichloroanisole (TCA). Most wine drinkers can’t detect it until it goes above 6 parts per trillion (ppt), but experts can sniff it below 2ppt. The big names in the Portuguese cork industry set out to solve the problem and spend fortunes in the needed technology to irradiate TCA from cork. 

It is true that the industry paid a heavy price for the mismanagement, but the price would be far greater for the environment. Due to their persevering in solving the problem, they also managed, in some way, to become crusaders of green issues. Cork oak trees naturally occur in mixed-plant woodlands and their root systems are excellent water regulators in the semi-arid region of the Portuguese Alentejo and Ribatejo landscape. They also anchor the soil and offer shade to an array of species. According to World Wildlife Fund (WWF)  the 108,000 hectares of Portuguese cork oak forest are instrumental in preventing this region from becoming a desert. Each tree sustains approximately 100 species of fauna and flora; it is the only place in which the rare short-toe eagle and even more extremely rare Iberian lynx will call home. As a living, breathing European ecosystem it is also a very effective carbon sink (cork forests sequester 10m tones of CO2 every year).