From Science News: Wine corks may owe quality to gene activity
Discovery that distinguishes superior stoppers could help reverse global downturn
Even the most superb wine won’t last without its cork, but the quality of this renewable oaken resource has nose-dived in recent years. A new genetic study of trees that produce high- and low-quality cork divulges some clues behind this decline, hinting at a possible link to climate change.
A great cork safeguards a wine’s taste and its aging process, while inferior cork can taint the vino’s flavor. Cork is made from the protective outer layer of bark surrounding Quercus suber oak trees, which grow only in southwest Europe and northwest Africa. But the global supply of cork, a $2 billion industry, has faced problems with quality and competition. Synthetic wine stoppers and metal caps offer a cheap alternative and have boomed in popularity in recent years, but oaken corks are still preferred by wine aficionados.
More here: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/wine-corks-may-owe-quality-gene-activity
Some inconvenient FAQs on Corks:
Q. Isn’t there a cork shortage?
A. No in fact, based upon current estimates there is enough cork to close all wine bottles produced in the world, for the next 100 years. The cork forests are now being more sustainably managed than ever before in their history and new planting is always ongoing.
Q. What’s wrong with screw caps and plastic closures?
A. Screw caps are not made from a sustainable product; they are not actively being recycled in the US and are not biodegradable. In comparison to a natural cork, 24 times more greenhouse gasses are released and over and 10 times more energy is used when making one screw cap.
Plastic closures are made from petro-chemicals, are not biodegradable and are rarely recycled. They are not sourced from a sustainable product and produce 10 times more greenhouse gasses than natural cork to produce.
More: http://www.corkforest.org/faq_cork_facts.php
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I am sure most of you have seen this, but just in case, I think this is way more valid evidence than the length of your corkscrew-
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IWN6JZIJv5s/Tv_u9XoIWyI/AAAAAAAAJCc/TJGqzdr1_eA/s640/Positive+Proof+of+Global+Warming.jpg
Ridiculous!!!! The bung pluggers union, both beer and whiskey barrels, will never accept the wine-ies having priority access to cork.
“… hinting at a possible link to climate change.”
So this this prove that cork trees can be psychologically affected by the “Jedi Mind Trick” ?
Maybe these researchers are cork soakers –
Relieved that rumours of the death of corkage have been exaggerated. I shall cancel my subscription to S.E.T.I. secure in the knowledge that Terrestrial Intelligence is alive and well at least among my fellow oenophiles. I am applying for a government grant to study the impact of Champagne corks on the mating habits of Mangrove Cuckoos in a climate changing world and need a comely assistant to paddle my canoe and sip champagne..
Figures. It just figures. All that hoo-haa about cork only growing in one area, and I read in the comments that it just ain’t so. If cork only grows in that one area it’s because people didn’t plant trees elsewhere. When somebody DOES plant a tree elsewhere– it grows there too. Who knew?
I wonder now, how many crops do we have that only come from one area of the world do that because they HAVE to grow there and nowhere else, and how many grow there only because nobody has tried to grow it anywhere else.
Wine is fine, but whiskey’s quicker 🙂
“Harold says:
Even if true, who other than a bunch of effete metrosexual .001%ers gives a flying cork?”
If I have a major biodegradable beef on the content 0f this site – which is typically excellent, especially when it highlights Godzilla and/or cow flatulence – I’d have to say it is – there is just too much hoity-toity wine talk. Perhaps it is all the international/worldwide influence here. Listen folks – only Murica and Eriador matter. Wine is unheard of in Eriador – an elf visiting on holiday might be caught sipping it once in a while, but they have always been strange like that and we never take them seriously – and a dwarf would throw away his ax and sit down to supper with a Goblin rather than drink wine. As for Murica – true Muricans only quaff the finest hops & malt. I bet Michael Mann is a prodigious wine drinker – probably white wine too.
Have spent a part of the last few days listening to some of the conference videos – all youse guys are fantastic, and I bet most of you prefer donuts and beer over wine. Very very well done!
Bah … I do live in one of those countries where cork is produced and that study is simply … lying. What happened is that there was a nasty fungal infection attacking a lot of Quercus Suber in Portugal and Spain in the last decade and because the cork is removed from the trees in a 9 years cycle, there is still a lot of inferior quality cork being used for bottling wine now. Now there were some … spirited 😉 attempts to link that fungal infection to CAGW, but with very little behind …
Oh, and BTW, for those that read the article, notice how the investigators found a link to UV exposure ( pretty normal , since Quercus Suber likes dry subtropical climates ) and that somehow was linked to CAGW? A couple of decades ago they would blame it on the Ozone hole, and TBH it would make a little more sense ….
You can generally tell when a rabidly dictatorially and power grasping movement or organisation or a cult has reached it’s use by date when it is no longer regarded and commented on with a discomfort or a disgust or an anger or even a revealing of a deep seated fear of the movement when commenters start to use sarcasm, irony and open contempt when commenting on the movement / cults latest offerings.
We are seeing this large shift in attitudes right here and now in the comments above and in many recent past posts and comments on WUWT
We are seeing a similar trend right across the full spectrum of the skeptic and some luke warmer climate blogs in the shift in attitudes from a concern about the increasing power and influence of the climate catastrophe cult to a confidence that the worst that the man made climate catastrophe cult can do to our society and peoples is now past and the cult is in a long terminal decline towards a well deserved oblivion.
I see the ever increasing sarcasm and the ever deeper irony and contemptuousness of the comments above for the output of claimed, so called climate related research and look at all those other similar in trend comments and blog posts on other skeptic and luke warmer sites plus the very well deserved opprobrium that is being heaped by all sides in the climate debacle on an increasing cascade of what can only be described as climate catastrophe science reports and papers.
It seems blatantly obvious when one looks at the avalanche of publicly funded, deeply flawed, often opinion only, unsubstantiated, unvalidated and data-less reports and papers that are passed off as some form of climate science then it becomes apparent that nearly all of those papers are seemingly written by a whole generation of either grossly dishonest or deeply deluded and / or intellectually challenged climate catastrophe carpet bagging cultist researchers.
It is through this deliberate and gross corruption of what science is truly meant to represent that climate catastrophe science and it’s adherents are finally getting their self created and malodorous reputations which they themselves have created through their own arrogance and stupidity and their total lack of any demonstrable scientific, intellectual, ethical and moral rigor and honesty.
With sincerest apologies to Winston Churchill;
This is not the end.
It is perhaps, the end of the beginning.
And it is perhaps the beginning of the end.
Cork, screw top, plastic plug… put one of each bottle in a paper bag, go find a nice bench down by the bus station, start drinking, and by the time you’re halfway through the experiment, it’ll all taste the same. Ask any knowledgeable wino ;o)
Well most of our wine accept bubbly stuff, has screw tops.
I drink a fair bit of red and would take a screw-capped bottle over one with a cork any time. Previous posters have noted issues with the corks, I’ve had far too many bottled of wine that are “corked” and wasted to ever be enamoured of the horrible things. Save the cork for fishing rod handles (I note its comeback- my latest two rods both have cork) and for nice cork tiles.
Aye! The high quality cork rings disappeared during the late seventies last century and by the mid eighties what used to be A and B grade cork was getting labeled as AAA and AA cork costing over a dollar per ring. (half inch thick rings, 12 – 18 inch handles).
Back then we were told that changes in how cork was harvested coupled with the loss of experienced cork harvesters made for the difference in cork quality (shorter times between harvest, quota pressured less careful harvesters).
Yes, wine corks are a significant portion of the cork harvest; one mustn’t forget cork is also a terrific insulator. If one wants a quiet room, cork goes into the ceiling walls and floors. Cork as a floor underlayment makes a flooring quiet and comfortable to walk or stand on.
Add to that others uses of cork for displays, planters, bird perches, terrarium crawlways… And the ever present cork board for posting notices and similar. (should I mention that luthiers use cork for their instrument jigs providing cushioning and ‘grab’?)
Nice to see you’re a rod builder (and fisherperson) George.
If like me you pop a bottle of wine and only drink a glass, I highly recommend the device/cork that sucks the air out of the bottle. It is a vacuum pump with a synthetic rubber cork. I’ve gone a couple weeks before reopening the bottle with almost no degradation of the wine. Reusing screw tops, corks, and synthetic corks leave oxygen in the bottle which degrades the wine. The device has saved me from drinking a lot of bad wine or throwing it away – which happened a lot prior to using this device. Therefore as long as the wine remains properly sealed prior to use, I don’t care what kind of cork it is, although I agree with the one commenter that cork bits in the wine are really annoying. I like a good red wine, but the go-to is Scotch.
Portugal, where most corks come from, are not making enough money to sustain the cork industry. The cork oak is also the home of the European Lynx, an endangered species, and survival of the oak forests vital for this animal.
The answer is to buy wine only with a cork stopper.
http://www.enologyinternational.com/cork/cork.html
Unlike most of the commenters here I’m a credentialed wine expert. I finished fifth in the California Wine Tasting Championships about twenty years ago.
The best way to package wine is clearly in a box. The wine stays fresh indefinitely. Back when I was a sucker for wine gizmos. I had this thing that refilled the space above the half empty wine bottle with nitrogen. The idea was that oxygen would oxidize the wine. That empty space is always present in any hard container like a bottle but a box has a sterile plastic liner which contracts as the wine is remove.
I have outgrown wine gizmos. I now spend my spare cash on coffee gizmos.
I have Safeway deliver a 5 liter box of Almaden cabernet or chardonnay every month or so. I keep it on a shelf in my refrigerator. Almaden is an excellent mid-quality vin ordinaire. That means it is vastly better than anything you are likely to get in Europe unless you are buying a bottle made for the export market.
The joys of boxed wine would be clear to all if the wineries would only package their best wines in boxes. My favorite Chardonnay is probably Rombauer’s. It’s about $30 a bottle these days and it sells out quickly. Given the economies of scale and the lower expenses of materials, a five liter box of Rombauer Chardonnay could probably turn a profit at only a hundred dollars a bottle. Me want.
But because of codger superstitions the really good wines are only sold with corks. OTOH here in the Bay Area we are close enough that some entrepreneur will likely run a pipeline from Napa and we will have wine on tap in all our houses. No corks, no bottles, no boxes,
[Thank you! .mod]
When I was dealing with the wine industry back in the 80s they were concerned with the availability and quality of cork – that’s why the stelvin cap closure was developed. Except for sparkling and high-end wines, Australasia pretty much uses the stelvin on every other bottle.
The 100-year availability sounds like not much cork is required and hyperbole to promote more use of cork, or yet one more reason to trot out the “climate-change” scenario
george e. smith says:
July 16, 2014 at 1:29 pm
Well cork is also a highly preferred material to make the handles of fishing rods, specially good fly rods. No substitute even comes close.
But these days, all you can buy to make rods, is crap; full of large voids, and easily broken.
Absolutely agree George, I still have my dad’s split-cane fly rod which still has a beautiful handle (although I don’t use it too much these days). The newer ones aren’t a patch on it, foam is great for my sea rods but you’re right, for fly rods it’s cork first and substitutes a distant second.
As a wine bibber, but not a conoiser, I prefer screw tops because I don’t have to find the cork screw and #$%& around with the cork and strain little pieces of cork out of the wine before I drink it. All I have to do with a screw top bottle is twist and then bottoms up.
Cheers.
It’s worse than we thought.
97% of scientists prefer their wine with a cork and the lowly deniers prefer it with a screw cap for quality and accessibility reasons.
The fact is, there are far more chances of the cork making the wine go off. It’s a throw back into the dark ages. There’s no shortage of cork. Also known as the fire oak. Whole woods of the stuff grow barely used in Southern Spain. Every so often they will peel some off to rot the next batch of posh wine while the ordinary public buy the stuff in cardboard boxes like we buy sterilised milk..