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Posted by Alan Boehmer May 12, 2008 |
Amorim & Irmãos of Portugal, the world’s largest producer of natural cork wine closures (over 3 billion annually) and their U.S. sales offices, and Anorim and Portocork America, have instituted a pilot program in California and the Pacific Northwest to recycle natural cork wine closures.
Natural cork offers advantages over all other wine bottle closures, along with a few serious disadvantages. Between 5-9% of all wine sealed by natural cork will be affected by TCA, or cork taint. These wines are ruined. However, this year a French company, Oeneo-Bouchage, introduced the first taint-free cork—DIAM—now in use by some of Alsace's largest wineries. This may signal a move away from synthetic closures.
Amorim's ReCork America program has set up recycling centers in several wine regions, including Napa Valley, along with a convenient recycling program. The used corks are placed in the same bags used to deliver fresh corks and trucked by the recycler to a processing plant where the material is prepared for use in floor tiles, building insulation and gardening products. A company is Missouri is producing attractive flooring made from recycled corks and has already partnered with ReCORK to pay for transportation.
Natural cork is a fully sustainable agricultural product. The bark is stripped from cork oak trees once every nine years; the trees live for around 200 years. Natural cork is the closure of choice for all the world's finest wines.