The Cork Guilt Trip

The Portuguese cork industry can really target a market. Everyday on NPR I hear the moaning of the “voice” of cork trying to lay a crown of cork thorns on the head of the wine drinker in America. Apparently we must buy wines sealed only with natural corks or we are responsible for climate change, the loss of endangered animal habitat and the demise of ancient cork oaks. It’s all up to us. Not!

Here is what I’ll give’em; when corks are perfect, they are perfect. The problem is; they are often not perfect. I’m a wine industry professional not the typical wine consumer with many more important things on their mind than wine closures. I know enough about wine closures to not be swayed by the guilt-trip bits of pseudo-info that “Big Cork” is placing on the back of the consumer with regard corks and wine.

Corks oaks sequester carbon; no doubt, I’m sure they do. What doesn’t is the immense cost of first shipping Portuguese corks to wineries all over the world and then off to the worlds markets only to have the wine go bad due to cork failure. Now we’re just at the beginning of the waste; the wine gets transported to importers, distributors, retailers or restaurants and finally to you. Lots of movement there; now you pull the cork and due to the imperfect nature of corks; the wine may be bad. Back to the store to return the bad bottle which gets sent back to the distributor and so on. That’s a lot of transportation energy wasted due to a bad cork. I’ve read industry stats that show that 2% to 5% of natural corks fail. How much fuel is spent moving that volume of fundamentally useless product?

The answers? Plastic corks; nope they’re worse at every turn. Glass closures; not very practical or cost effective on inexpensive wines. Screw caps, much better but not perfect. There is no final answer at this point, just a need to find something better. In the mean time Portugal might consider upgrading the quality of cork closures and possibly banning the sale of inferior quality cork products that are prone to failure; therefore waste. Giving the world better corks can help solve the problem. Wine producers are not without fault in the argument in this debate, if the wine is meant for early consumption; don’t waste a cork. The consumer bears a bit of blame, while the knuckle draggers wax poetically about the traditions of the corks, money and wine is wasted. Evolve a bit.

In the process of exploring and creating a better closure; using guilt to shore up a troubled Portuguese cork industry is not the answer.