Corks and Pines

 24-Apr-2022

Breakfast at the five star hotel.

One of the things we noticed on these tours is that the least expensive hotels have the best breakfast. This place is nice but the breakfast reminded us of home.

Anyway, off to the bus for an hour ride to our next stop, a cork oak farm.  I know I made a joke about cork trees but this place is no joke.  The farm has been in the family for many generations.  The matriarch is almost as old as Gladys and the rest of the family runs the place.  Our guide Carlos  loaded us into a safari trailer pulled by a tractor and we chugged off through the farm. Carlos is the current boss of the business which produces cork, wine and olive oil.  With 10,000 acres it takes a lot of work. They  also charge hunters a daily fee to come in and hunt wild boar.

Here is a short description of how to harvest cork.

The trees are cork oaks and the cork comes from the bark. The cork is harvested by removing the outer layer of bark by cutting around the tree and splitting the dead layer to remove it.  The live bark underneath is left for the next harvest. It's kind of like a haircut.  

This sounds simple but it is not.  A new cork oak takes 9 years to mature enough for the first harvest.  That cork is not usable and is disposed of.  The next harvest is 9 years later and that one is also not used.  The tree is 27 years old before any usable cork is obtained. This means that cork farming is a long term business. The cork bark is bundled and shipped to a factory where the cork is turned into bottle stoppers for Cooper's Hawk (and 80% of the rest of the wine bottles in the world). Only 30% of the cork ends up as stoppers but that generates 70% of the income.

Coming soon to Avenida

Cork tree that has been harvested

After the tour we went to lunch at the farm.  They  have a large room with walls covered in hunting trophies and antlers.

Lunch was great and we enjoyed our visit with Vittoria, the future head of  the cork empire.

We'll publish more photos later when  we get some free time.

Now it's off to Nazare