Shortly after publishing my treatise on wine closures, I received an email from one Adrián Tejeda Cano, a Quality Technician for ASECOR – the Agrupación Sanvicenteña de Empresarios del Corcho. Adrián felt that I completely misrepresented the cork industry, and he chastised me for spreading propaganda based on misleading information. Basically: shut up little girl; you don’t know what you’re talking about and besides that, you’re spreading rumours that are ruining our livelihoods.

Too bad I hadn’t yet posted my piece on DIAM corks; he may not have had quite such strong feelings against me. Oh well – I’ll post that piece soon enough, but first I’d like to address the issues Adrián raised in his email.

First, some background information: ASECOR is a group of 70 affiliated companies of the cork sector, based on San Vicente de Alcántara – the professed “City of Cork” and the home base of Spain’s major cork operations. Incidentally, San Vicente is also home to the producers of the DIAM cork, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Spain’s cork sector is no small thing, representing roughly one-third of the world’s total cork production. Though cork has myriad uses in dozens of industries, its use as bottle stoppers is by far the most lucrative – worldwide, almost two-thirds of cork revenues come from the bottle stopper industry. Obviously, with the rise of the screwcap and other alternative wine bottle closures, cork producers have lost millions of dollars and are set to lose even more, if the trend away from natural cork stoppers continues. In light of this, ASECOR aims to rectify some of the damage through the “sociocultural and economic promotion” of the cork sector.

Or at least, that’s what I think they are aiming to achieve; unfortunately, there is a rather strong language barrier at work. While I am somewhat tolerant of these difficulties, if their goal is to promote their corks on an international scale, they really need to invest in some proper translators – running things through Babel Fish just doesn’t cut it. (Though, admittedly I enjoyed a snicker or two whilst reading some of their badly-translated content. I especially urge you to check out the banner at the top of the Terms of Use page – this should be proof enough for anyone that the work of a good [human] translator is absolutely indispensable.)

The website doesn’t really go into any specifics of how ASECOR plans to achieve its rather lofty goals; presumably emailing bloggers who bash cork stoppers is on their priority list.

All joking and snotty comments aside, however – I sympathize with ASECOR’s motivations. We are talking about the livelihood of thousands, if not millions, of people – not just in Spain, but also in Portugal, the world leader of cork production, and several other cork-laden nations in southwestern Europe and northern Africa. These countries rely on cork production to put food in the mouths of their citizens, and it would be appallingly crass of me to brush aside the human side of this issue.

That said, I still stand firm in my opinion that natural cork is an inferior wine bottle closure. I arrived at this conclusion through cold, hard experience. I have encountered numerous cork-sealed wine bottles that were rendered undrinkable through faulty corks – cork taint tops the list of complaints, but I’ve also had several bottles that were leaking and/or oxidized due to a shoddy cork. I have had precisely zero bottles of faulty screwcap-sealed wine.

I realize that corks have become a bogeyman of sorts, and that the media has repeatedly presented them from an unfavourable standpoint in recent times. But there’s a reason for this, and it’s simply that TCA contamination is a common reality for a noticeable percentage of wines. Alas, exact numbers are impossible to present, as they are wildly skewed based on who you’re talking to. Wine Spectator is famous for quoting the rate of TCA-contaminated wines at 7 to 12 percent, while industry officials are likely to drop that number down to around 1 or 2 percent.

Still, if TCA contamination had really been abolished, we wouldn’t still be having this argument. Furthermore, ASECOR and its affiliates may claim the support of objective scientific data, but they are presenting it from an extremely biased position. Actually, they are much more biased than I am, since they are comprised of people with a serious financial stake in the cork industry.

I speak as a consumer, who is tired of being treated to the aroma of mouldy cardboard in bottle after bottle. I can’t think of any other industry where the consumer is forced to accept a 10% chance that the product they purchase will be completely unusable – not to mention the distinct unlikelihood of being refunded for such a product.

Nonetheless, I’d like to thank Adrián for taking the time to contact me. I do appreciate hearing all sides of the story, and I really do feel for the people whose livelihoods have been jeopardized by the decline in wine cork production. Perhaps if I take Adrián up on his offer of visiting San Vicente in person, I’ll soften my harsh opinion of corks. Well my friend, as soon as you book my plane ticket, I’m there.