Ep 118: Everything you need to know about Cork Oak Forests with Carlos de Jesus, Head of Marketing and Communication at Amorim Cork (Part 1)

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Today's theme is Cork, a natural wine stopper that has been used for centuries. They come from a forest habitat with incredible biological diversity. With the explosion of screw caps in the last 20 years, many began predicting that cork stopper would become obsolete. But the story behind cork is so much more than the fact that they are adequate at sealing the neck of a glass bottle. There are the people, the animals, an epic story of sustainability. And so, this episode, I'm talking with Carlos De Jesus, who heads the marketing and communications department at Amorim Cork, the world's leading company in the cork sector. In part one we touch on TCA, Trichloroanisole. This has been the nightmare story for cork as when wine comes in contact with a natural cork that has been affected by TCA, it changes the flavors of that wine for the worst. Flavours such as musty, wet cardboard. But we will also touch on the science that has now been used to eliminate TCA, and offers a non-detectable TCA guarantee on cork. You're going to understand the composition of a single cork and how it works, why it truly is one of the world's greatest sustainability stories, which countries produce cork, the age of the trees, and when it was first discovered. And next week will we touch on everything else, like harvesting the bark and how to convert that into the cylinder cork that we know.

If you want to skip ahead:

2.52: How did Carlos get into the Cork industry

5.43: Carlos' best wine memories

10.51: More about Amorim, the leading producer of cork and how they used technology to defeat TCA, including:

- detecting TCA

- the number of wine bottles made in a year (how many to each type of closure)

21.24: The number of cells in a single cork

24.27: The sustainability story of cork

27.39: Where are the cork oak forests

30.14: How long cork oak trees have been around and when were they first used as cork

32.06: Describing a cork oak forest during harvest

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Until next time, Cheers to you!