Gourmets of Wine > Corks and Corkscrews

[Seafoam Woodturning] Sometimes wine goes off due to contact with cork which has been contaminated with mold and chlorine. This creates a chemical known as TCA and the bottle is said to be 'corked'. This has caused considerable debate about the use of cork, and there are many calls for vineyards to consider switching to alternatives. This has created some concern within environmental organistions such as the RSPB, who warn that a large move away from cork might mean destruction of the cork oak forests and the loss of species such as the Iberian lynx, the Spanish imperial eagle and the Bonelli's eagle.

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[Adventures in Ethical Consumerism] Healthy floors: "[Cork] is a good environmental choice because, not only is it natural and requiring little energy to produce, no trees are actually cut down to harvest it. Instead, the cork is stripped off the trees which are then left for nine years, allowing the cork to grow back completely... Cork forests in Spain Portugal and Tunisia are home to a variety of endangered wildlife including the imperial eagle and barbery deer. Unfortunately, they're also under threat because the demand for cork stoppers for wine has declined as the popularity for plastic corks has increased."

Mirabilis.ca[Mirabilis.ca] Cork: Portugal is the world's biggest producer of natural cork, a time-consuming business which could be squeezed out by plastic stoppers that are far easier to make and claim to preserve the taste of wine better. Cork makers estimate synthetic rivals have already eaten away 8% of a market which earns Portugal some 900 million euros a year in exports.

[Pdijdom.blogspot.com] Purple Daze: Imperial Journal 1: Truer Words....: <!--[gte IE 5]><?xml:namespace prefix="v" /><?xml:namespace prefix="o" /><![endif]--> <DIV> <P><B>If I could put Time in a bottle, I'd never take the cork out.</B></P> <P>How pathetic is the state of modern American journalism?</P> <P>Ann Coulter was just on the cover of Time. </P> <P>It was also the second straight issue in which Time sang Coulter's praises, whitewashed her record, whitewashed her disregard for facts, whitewashed her record of saying insanely violent and menacing things about anyone who isn't on her side politically.</P> <P>If there's some usefulness in presenting the most caustic, horrible person we have allowed into our public discourse in my lifetime (at least) as charming, funny, honest, and a lot of other things she distinctly isn't, I'm failing to see it.</P> <P>(Incidentally, now that she's been all over television talking-head shows for years and written up in two consecutive issues of Time, can conservatives please stop insisting that liberals who dislike Coulter are the only ones paying attention to her? Because it's patently not true.)</P> <P>I don't feel compelled to run off a list of Coulter lies here, because if you want to know, Google should provide plenty of that.

Hill-kleerup.orghttp://www.hill-kleerup.org [Hill-kleerup.org] ***Dave :: There’sa corker: The world’s wine industry is slowly but surely moving away from “real” corks to synthetic ones, which are supposed to be more reliable and more protective of the wine inside. Problem is, that obsoletes the cork industry in Portugal, which means that Portuguese cork forests are being developed, which means that the ecosystems of those forests are in danger.

http://darthvob.us [Darthvob.us] Musings From The Imperial Senate » 2003 » July » 01: For some, I think it’s about ego. I read blogs by people like that and I enjoy them. For others it’s about emotional release. Some do it for posterity’s’ sake - so the kids can read about what mommy or daddy was thinking when they were babies.

Boingboing.nethttp://boingboing.net [Boingboing.net] Boing Boing: December 2002: As the world's vintners move away from natural cork -- which some claim is responsible for "corking" spoilage of up to four percent of all wine -- to synthetic stoppers, animal conservationists are sounding alarm bells about the future of the endangered species that thrive in cork orchards.

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