of Portugal. It was a cork producer's side of the story type of article. It did get me to think, though; what will happen if the wine industry abandons cork? My question is this, would anyone feel remorse at the fact that an entire region of people would essentially be left without a livelihood? While the harvesters of cork aren't exactly living the high life, they do seem to make a respectable living. It also seems that besides cork, there is nothing else for these people to make a living from. It doesn't seem like they have big modernized factories that can be retooled or a workforce that can be retrained to do something else. What they know is cork and it's what they've been doing for generations. What are we talking about when we speak of wine damaged by cork, 5-10% of the wine we've had? Is this a sufficient reason to wipe out an entire industry? Obviously, I'm sympathetic to the cork harvesters and I think they have a "purists" sensibility. They work the land and trees with their hands. They have an intimate understanding of their product. When you take into account that wine also comes from the land and trees, it seems wrong to want to use something artificial or strictly machine made to cover this product of nature called wine. The bad cork producers should be weeded out just like the bad wine producers are weeded out. 1 or 2 bad bottles of wine for every 10 shouldn't be a license to change. With screwcaps every bottle of the same wine will taste the same, theoretically. But should this really be our goal. Should wine be like beer? or McDonalds? Everywhere you go, anywhere you are, bottle X will taste exactly the same. Isn't there a romanticism to wine. Where will it end? When do we go to plastic bottles? Cork isn't an ideal product in the same way that mechanical watches aren't ideal for their task. A quartz will outshine a mechanical, no matter how expensive, at the task of accurate time telling. There are enough perfect, artifical things in our lives. I'm for cork and more importantly I'm for the cork harvesters.

Cork flooring is a big end product and is currently fashionable. Technology helped with polyurethane coatings and glueless tongue and groove laying. There are other uses for cork and its diminution for bottling wine will
not be a disaster.The NYTimes is a disaster.

saving local jobs is a fairly poor one.Agriculture world-wide and cetainly in Europe has lost millions of jobs over the last hundred years yet no-one blames Europes unemployment rate on that fact.Subsidising ineffiecent or unwanted industries wastes money and delays reform.Half of the European Unions budjet goes to supporting farmers who over produce the worlds most expensive food.Would you now stop wine producers from finding alteratives a better way of sealing bottles.I bet the sellers of clay pots and goat skins cried when glass bottles were introduced as well.

From Janis Robinson the Ft's wine writer:

'The most bizarre PR campaign mounted by the cork industry is that every plastic cork or screwcap represents a nail in the coffin of southern Portugal's ecosystem. Even Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Prince Charles have been persuaded by this argument, which is pretty rich considering that total worldwide demand for natural corks continues to increase at an extremely healthy rate as wine producers in the most important wine-producing countries switch from selling in bulk to bottle. It will be a long time before cork forests shrink as a result of a switch to screwcaps and plastic cylinders.'

From the same site : http://www.jancisrobinson.com/jr850.htmTher

they had the god given right to cut down old growth forests. The fishing industry is very similar. Just because your family has been raping the land and seas for generations does not guarantee your livelihood indefinitely.

Bring on the screw tops!

Chris

cork is harvested from trees and is a renewable resource

of '98 Ruchottes-Chambertin from Georges Mugneret a couple of nights ago. Fortunately we had back up bottles but my friend who brought this one was not happy. A $75 investment should not be made undrinkable by a $ .50 cork.

I just visited the Gunderloch winery in Nackenheim where Fritz Hasselbach lost 40% of his wonderful '01 harvest because of a batch of tainted corks. At least the wine had not yet been shipped from the estate when the problem was discovered so serious damage was not done to his reputation. Still the cost of opening and checking every bottle, of the tainted wines, of the lawsuit which could drag on for years. Do you wonder that he is converting to screwcaps. I have little sympathy for the cork producers. All the best R