The World Wildlife Fund has called on the wine industry to 'choose cork' in order to save the environment.
In a leaflet entitled 'Cork Screwed? Environmental and economic impacts of the cork stoppers market' the WWF argues for the preservation of the US$329m cork industry.
It predicts that by 2015, 95% of wine bottles will be closed with alternatives to cork. Annual cork production will go down from 300,000 tonnes to 19,500 tonnes.
'There is a risk that the Western Mediterranean cork oak landscapes will face an economic crisis, an increase in poverty, an intensification of forest fires, a loss of irreplaceable biodiversity…' the leaflet says.
27,500 industrial jobs and 35,000 forestry jobs would disappear. At present the cork industries of Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Italy, Tunisia and France maintain 2.7m ha of land and provide income sources for 100,000 people.
Cork forests also support 'endangered species such as the Iberian lynx, the Iberian imperial eagle and the barbary deer.'
Cork, the WWF says, has a wide variety of uses, from clothes to insulation, 'and even rocket technology', but bottle stoppers represent 70% of the total market value.
The onus to save the cork business is laid on the wine industry. It needs to 'demonstrate its corporate responsibility by considering the environmental and socioeconomic values of cork – by choosing cork and promoting its use'.
It also needs to seriously address the issue of cork taint – TCA – and traceability.
'WWF believes that industries offer added value to their consumers while working for nature,' the leaflet concludes.
Whether this will have any effect is a moot point, as more and more wine producers turn away from cork in favour of closures that offer less chance of taint.
Andrew Jefford, who has written extensively on the subject, said, 'The industry will always take quality control as the most important issue. Producers will go for screwcap regardless of the environmental considerations if they think it is the best closure.'
He added, 'While red wine producers are still very uncertain that screwcaps are the future, for short-term storage wines cork has already lost the battle. No amount of environmental pleading will change that.'
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Presumably the WWF would have preferred there to have been no industrial or agricultural revolution either? Yvonne May, London
What is it about wine journalists that they accept without question the spin delivered to them by the wine industry. Does Andrew Jefford really believe that the decision to use screwcaps is a 'quality control' one? Here in New Zealand where 75% of wine is now bottled under screwcap, a medium sized winery saves some €355,000 each year by using screwcaps instead of cork, so what is all this about quality control?
And at the end of the day, the same commercial drive will send screwcappers back to cork, if the WWF and its green supporters make clear what will be lost should the cork forests disappear. The week that CBS leads its news with a story saying climate change will wipe out California's premium wine industry is hardly the time to be claiming that "environmental pleading" will not be a factor in consumer choice in the near future, if not now. Especially when none of the wineries making huge savings on screwcaps are actually passing that saving on to consumers.
Keith Stewart, New Zealand
Re your story on the WWF call to cork arms, I wonder whether there was a similar furore in the bladder trade several centuries ago when wine moved from being stored in animal skins to glass. Did several important herds disappear as a result? Did a former incarnation of the WWF make an impassioned plea to save these herds? And did Ye Olde Wine Industrie take any notice of their pleas? Bladders disappeared because they didn't work as well as glass, and they weren't repeatable – each one is different from the next. So it is with cork. Buy a case of wine with corks in and you'll actually have twelve ever-so-slightly different bottles, with the differences increasing over time. That's the attraction of screwcaps/Vino-Loks etc.
As for Keith Stewart's comment on journalists being influenced by the spin of the wine industry, the cork industry itself has not been averse to the use of spin in recent years. I remember being in his home country tasting some Kumeu River wines with Michael Brajkovich's then-fiancée Kate. As yet another bottle was replaced due to cork taint, Kate confessed that some batches from the 1998 vintage had shown taint rates of more than 50%. How would the WWF respond to that? Yes, we all want to save the environment. I personally find it very two-faced of certain wineries to play the environment card and then show you their squillion-pound winery, building of which involved destroying large amounts of the natural landscape. But whether you regard producing wine as a science or an art, it's hard to argue any stopper that fails to keep the contents of a bottle in as good a condition as its creator intended is fit for purpose. Simon Woods
The WWF opinion reminds me the economic sophism "A Petition" by Frederic Bastiat from 1845:
The petitioners were the manufacturers of candles, tapers, lanterns, etc. who
praised the Honorable Members of the the Chamber of Deputies for having
"little regard for abundance and low prices" and for their concern "with the
fate of the producer". The purpose of the petition was nothing less than to
be freed from the competition of the sun from which the industry suffered. To
this end the candle makers asked the Chamber of Deputies "... to be so good
as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights,
inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull's-eyes, deadlights,
and blinds - in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through
which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the
fair industries ...". Apparently, today as yesterday, interests easily
prevail over economic sense. Rolf Mueller, Kronshagen, Germany
The EU seems to have no problem spending huge amounts of money bailing out the wine industry in Europe year after year. Perhaps spending some of that money supporting the cork industry might be in order. Elimination of the cork taint problem should be a priority. When 27,500 industrial and 35,000 forestry jobs are at stake it seems only fair and logical to give support to that side of the wine industry as well. Wilf Krutzmann
Both our week-end wines were badly corked. We had no purchase receipts & had been cellared for long enough to forget where they were purchased. Enough said! W R Williams
There would be no problem in satisfying WWF's appeal if cork producers would care as much about their product as viticulturists do. WWF's concerns may be justified, but their message does not address the right people: it is up to cork producers to look after their natural heritage. getting used to flawed wine just to protect the Iberian Eagle does not make sense at all. Ulrich Sautter, Hamburg
Has anyone heard of the composite cork Diam? It is made by a company called Sabate (they also make screwcaps). They claim to virtually eliminate TCA and guarantee the rate of air passing through their corks thereby eliminating random oxidation. We use their cork and in the last 20,000 wines sold only two were returned as "corked". Oh, and it is 100% natural cork. James Tilbrook, Tilbrook Estate
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Presumably the WWF would have preferred there to have been no industrial or agricultural revolution either? Yvonne May, London
