Monthly Archives: January 2010

Plants, like vampires, should not sparkle. Actually, most things in nature shouldn’t sparkle, save for gemstones and the reflection of sunlight on water, glass and CDs.

I just purchased a dieffenbachia (Dieffenbachia sp.) for my office cubicle, because I’m addicted to plants and prefer to be surrounded by foliage at all times, if possible. Also, my little arrowhead vine (Syngonium sp.) was getting lonely. To my dismay, as I toted it up to the office I noticed a bunch of silver and red sparkles sprinkled all over its otherwise lovely broad leaves. I washed them off immediately upon returning to my desk, and the plant doesn’t appear to have suffered any ill effects from them. I’m guessing that the sparkles weren’t intentionally applied to this particular plant – judging by the layer of dust on the leaves, it seems more likely that they fell off some other plants (probably those nefariously sparkly Christmas poinsettias – more on them in a minute). And if these sparkles were intentional, the applicant certainly made a bad choice, as they looked pretty awful against the green and yellowish-white variegated leaves.

Much to my chagrin, some people clearly do not agree with my preference of keeping plants in their natural, unadorned state. Probably the worst offenders are the aforementioned purveyors of poinsettias during the Christmas season. It seems almost a requirement for these poor plants to be hosed down with glitter and festooned with garish ribbons before being trotted out on display in various shopping centres and office buildings. Yes, I know shiny things are part of the festive season, but let’s keep the sparkles on inorganic matter only, shall we?

Plants “breathe” through pore (stomata) on their leaves. As such, the leaves need to be free of dirt, dust and other foreign material (ie. sparkles) in order to respire. Though humans may only end up with pimples if their pores are clogged, a plant with clogged stomata will end up dead, or at least seriously unhealthy – especially since the sparkles are often applied with an aerosol spray that leaves other toxic substances on the leaves. So please, save the sparkles for your kids’ arts and crafts time, and keep them off the plants. (more…)

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. (more…)

Corks suck. Oh sure, they look neat and all, but they are a terrible choice for sealing a bottle of wine. Sure, if you save up a bunch of them you can make all sorts of nifty arts and crafts projects – even a boat, if you are so inclined. But if I crack another cork-sealed bottle and get a whiff of mouldy cardboard, I’m going to just…well, probably just dump it down the drain, and open another. Still.

For the uninitiated, I’m referring to the infamous “cork taint” to which so many wines succumb. These “corked” wines smell like damp basement and taste like wet dog. In my humble opinion they are wholly undrinkable, even when the musty smells and tastes are just past sensory threshold levels – I just can’t get past the reek to discover whatever goodness may be hidden underneath. That said, cork taint isn’t physically harmful, so those who care little for olfactory pleasure, and/or who just desperately need a buzz, are completely safe to chug away.

Cork taint is caused by the chemical compound 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA). TCA forms through the interaction of chlorine, organic phenols (found in all organic matter) and mould. It is extremely potent and only very low levels are required to completely destroy the taste and aroma of that bottle of wine you’ve been saving for months in eager anticipation of the day when you finally open it up in hopes of impressing that special someone you finally got the courage to ask out on a date.

Roughly 8% to 12% of all wines bottled with natural corks are contaminated. Better practices in cork technology – selecting healthy pieces of raw cork, cleaning the corks before they are used – can reduce this number, but cork taint still spoils an unacceptably high proportion of wine.

Really, corked wine is unavoidable where natural corks are concerned, as the shittiness of corks as wine stoppers lies in the simple, unchangeable fact of their material being. Corks are chunks of tree bark, punched out of large slabs harvested from cork trees (Quercus suber), a species of deciduous evergreen oak native to southwest Europe and northwest Africa. As organic matter, cork is ripe with organic phenols – and with chlorine a common component of various cleaners and fungi spores everywhere in the very air we breathe, it’s really not difficult for TCA to form in any situation.

Let’s stop and consider this. For all that wine fits into the modern-day image of sophistication and high culture, most wine bottles are sealed with a hunk of bark, even (and especially) the really expensive stuff – and even when there’s a decent chance that this piece of bark contains chemicals that will ruin everything. How…quaint. (more…)