In Support of Cork
Elyas Beria

I used to not care much about the cork versus screw cap debate. “Let the market decide,” I would say. To tell the truth, I even quietly derided those that showed sentimentality for cork and an aversion to screw caps. After all, the wine is what’s important, right?

That was before I read a report on cork by the WWF. Largely in part because of the worldwide shift to screw cap closures on wine bottles, the WWF reports that up to 75% of the cork forests in the Mediterranean might be lost within the next 10 years. Cork comes from the bark of a particular oak tree. The bark is stripped from the tree, turned into cork products, then the bark is allowed to grow back for about nine years and the process is repeated. Since harvesting for each tree can only take place every decade or so and any one oak tree can produce cork for well up to 200 years, the cork oak forests are very well protected. These forests reach some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world and are home to millions of wintering birds, not to mention the endangered species that live there as well.

The human cost of declining cork use is high also. Over 100,000 people in the Mediterranean region depend directly or indirectly on cork for their livelihoods. About 70% of the cork industry's revenue comes from cork wine stoppers.

It’s true that with cork there is a danger that the wine in the bottle might react with the cork and turn the wine bad. There is less of a chance of getting wine that has gone bad from a bottle with a screw cap, but then how important is that in the big picture?

The majority of wine purchased in the U.S. market is in the $10 to $20 range and is not purchased to be aged. Perhaps as screw caps prove themselves worthy of fine wines meant to be aged, we can transition to screw caps for those premier bottles. However, I feel that we need to keep cork for everything else. Do we really need a brand new industry? Do we especially need a new industry that will use even more metals and plastics? Besides, most wine shops have no problem taking back a bad bottle of wine.

In this era of realization that all things natural, renewable, and recyclable are better for us, doesn’t it make sense to keep a wine stopper that is all three? After contemplating all of these points I came to the conclusion that the wine is what’s important, and so is the world that gave it to us.