I drink a lot of wine.

Well, hopefully not too much, but you know what I mean. Wine is one of my three food groups (cheese and bread are the others). I drink all three colors, and am not prejudiced as to country  - although I love the Spanish reds, and the French and Italian whites....and a bunch of New World ones too.

And you can buy organic ones. Although I am not too paranoid about pesticide residues in my body, I know that it makes a difference to the environment of Chile or Washington State not having those insecticides contaminating their forests, fields and streams.

But ......each time I open a bottle, deep green that I am, I either rejoice or curse. Because the bottle will be sealed with natural cork or...something else.

Because nowadays, you get a lot of advice on corks. Yes, really. Things like, "who needs cork....you know, it is a lot more hygienic without cork....don't be snooty about screw top bottles...and the ‘plastic' corks are better too..."

But my friends, this is an urgent problem that the you and I really need to be aware of.

A treasured resource, as unique as the Amazonian rain forest, is in danger.

As you dive through the mountains of Spain and Portugal, you will see forests of cork oak, managed generation after generation by Iberian farmers in tiny houses nestled deep in the forest or perched perilously over the abyss. This is a crop, and a sustainable one. On the growth of those oak trees depends an artisanal livelihood - and much more.  

"Dehesas (Spain) and montados (Portugal) are mixed farming systems, combining oak woodlands with livestock grazing and cereal cultivation, often interspersed by areas of scrub - heather, gorse, brooms, lavender, rock rose, strawberry trees etc. Unlike other agro-forestry systems, it developed around the existing, primeval woodlands. Cork is the most economically valuable product. Spain and Portugal have more than half of the world's cork oak woodlands, and produce around three quarters of the world's cork..." (taken from the Royal Society for the Protection of Bird's excellent article, found here: www.rspb.org.uk/advice/green/do/shops/cork/good.asp)

So this is a whole ecosystem of mammals, birds, reptiles and invertebrates. In fact, this is the Iberian Peninsula equivalent of shade-grown coffee. And the only thing that stops these forests being razed for condominiums or villas ? The oaks. They make the cork as a ‘bark' that the farmers peel off. The cork is processed into wine corks (and other things) And the trees regrow the cork. So it goes on.

It is no exaggeration that, because wine corks represent ninety per cent of the economic value of these forests, it is only through drinking wine from bottles corked with a real cork that we will keep this habitat intact.

In other words, we cannot save the forests by using more cork flooring.

There are arguments against cork aplenty, partly based on the old fear of cork taint - the presence of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole from badly prepared cork - and partially the cost. Screw caps and artificial corks can be cheaper.

Let's look at that:

Cork taint...This problem has been hugely reduced by higher tech methods (see this very well-researched Audubon Magazine article - http://audubonmagazine.org/features0701/habitat.html )...and I have never, in my time of drinking wine (the last three decades) ever, ever ever, had a wine tainted in this way.

• Cost......... A solid natural cork costs 30 cents, on average; a plastic cork costs as little as 6 cents  (Audubon article). Hm. Okay. I'll pay the extra. Please!

And what's more...

The WWF has done the carbon footprint math....(www.corkqc.com/newsandpress/WebReprint16.pdf):

• • One million corks, around three tons of carbon dioxide a year; a million screw caps, 14 tons.
  • Spanish forests store 150 million tons of CO2 - ten per cent in the cork oak. The collection of the cork from an oak stimulates its growth - so a harvested cork oak tree absorbs 3 to 5 times more than one which is not harvested
• No real corks = habitat GONE.

... Oh - and the sound of a real cork being extracted is a lot more romantic than the click of a screw cap......

There is also severe ‘green' competition by The Wine Group (http://www.betterwinesbetterworld.com/) who make a great play on how the lightness of their Bag-in-Box packaging means a much reduced carbon footprint.

But...

(I know I am sounding like a broken record, as they say) No real cork = forests gone

• The forests themselves are carbon ‘sinks'

So....

I have been surveying the wine companies and their attitude. All companies have to balance out what their priorities are, but here is my list so far, from published data and personal research:

Some wine companies moving away from real cork:

Constellation Brands (Ravenswood, Robert Mondavi, etc)

Don Sebastiani

• Foster's

Alas, some very big names!

Wine companies currently committed or VERY committed to real cork:

• J. Lohr
• Korbel
• Frey's Organic
• Rubicon

There are also some excellent moves in the UK by supermarkets who label their ‘store brand' wines as having either natural cork, screw cap or synthetic closures - so you can make the right choice when buying. Hey, write and let me know if our US ones have started to do the same....

Now, as we all know - life is too short to drink bad wine. So I am not saying you should endure a crummy wine just because the bottle had a cork in it. But the cork-committed wineries produce wonderful wine. You aren't about to suffer.

Keep up to date too on the state of the cork forests and what the World Wildlife Fund is doing to help by visiting the really cool site www.panda.org/mediterranean/cork. One really great thing they are doing is getting Forest Stewardship Council accreditation for the forests too - so you really know, when you are drinking wine, that you are helping the locals  - http://www.fscus.org/.

And pass the word on. Wine without real cork is bad news.

Cheers!