Put a (real) cork in it

November 10th, 2009

Photo via Flickr: Stewart

When I recently wrote about recycling wine corks for my Eco Etiquette column — in which I expressed my disdain for the plastic, landfill-bound variety, as well as aluminum screw caps — I was not prepared for the slew of angry emails from the grape nut gallery.

I had your recycling corks article sent to me and, as someone who enjoys wine, it troubles me…. Some of the world’s best wines are now bottled under screw caps. Why? Because, by and large, they treat the wine better than cork does. And, as a side benefit, they are easier to open. A small fraction of wines bottled under cork can be tainted by the cork.

And another:

[Synthetic corks] are perfectly fine for wines you are going to bring home and drink within even a few months. They are, in large part, due to a worldwide shortage of natural cork…. unfortunately in your post you came across as completely pretentious, which I trust was not the intent, and is entirely the wrong approach to enjoying good wine and offering sage advice.

Now, I’m certainly not going to argue with a oenophile as to what method of closure ensures the best tasting wine, considering that most weeks I’m content with a bottle of Two Buck Chuck. There is no doubt that some very fine wines employ an aluminum screw cap; my main beef is with the environmental damage associated with synthetic corks (screw caps included). There’s a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to natural cork, so let me dispel a few myths:

Myth #1: Trees are cut down to make natural corks. Cork trees are not felled to harvest the cork; the renewable bark is stripped by hand off the tree. By using natural cork, you’re actually ensuring the survival of Mediterranean cork forests, which, like the rainforests of the Amazon, are crucial to the world’s biosphere.

Myth #2: There is a worldwide shortage of natural cork. Plain and simple, this is PR spin from the plastic cork/aluminum screw cap industry. “By all statistical standards, the cork forests have enough cork to close every bottle of wine produced, in the world, for the next 100 years, without planting new trees,” says Patrick Spencer, director of nonprofit cork recycler Cork ReHarvest.

Myth #3: You can recycle aluminum screw caps — natural corks aren’t recyclable. Actually, the plastic seal and adhesive in most screw caps contaminate the aluminum; the only choice is to send them to the landfill. And let’s not forget that harvesting aluminum is incredibly destructive to the environment. Natural cork, however, can be re-purposed into flooring tiles, building insulation, and packaging materials (and at the very least, can be cut up into compost).

Myth #4: Wines with natural corks are prone to spoilage. There’s been a rumor circulating for some time (perpetuated by alternative stopper manufacturers?) that with natural closures, one in 10 bottles of wine ends up corked. But a study by the UK’s Wine and Spirit Trade Association puts that figure between .7 and 1.2 percent; a prominent wine expert even announced earlier this year that TCA contamination is no longer a major problem for the US wine industry.

So go ahead, be a pretentious snob and insist on old-fashioned corks (just don’t forget to recycle them!): You’ll help save the cork forests, reduce destructive aluminum mining, and keep billions of screw caps and petroleum-based stoppers out of our landfills.

–Jennifer Grayson