Another Airbnb experience that exceeded our expectations! Today we went on a tour of a private cork forest near the city of Redondo. Antonio was our guide, and we spent about 2.5 hours driving around the forest in his 4×4 jeep. We were initially greeted on arrival by the owners dogs, and these dogs pretty much chased the jeep during the entire tour. Here they are after the first leg of our tour, resting up so they can continue the chase.
The tour was scenic and extremely educational. Definitely a “must do” if you are in Portugal!
Cork trees take 15 years to mature to the point where you can make the 1st extraction, and then every 10 years thereafter. The first 2 extractions produce cork that is used in various ways, but not wine stoppers, where the real money is You can’t make cork for wine bottles until the 3rd extraction, so you have to wait 35 years!
Portugal has very strict rules on the owners of the cork forests. They are not allowed to remove a cork tree unless it is dead. Even if it is dead, they have to have a government official come to the estate and inspect the tree to make SURE it’s dead before they can remove it. They are also not allowed to plant new trees. That process has to happen naturally.
When a tree has it’s cork extracted, they mark the tree with the year of extraction. The recently extracted trees have a reddish color that turns black by the next year. For 1st and 2nd extractions, they only remove half the height of the main bark of the tree, as this is better for the young tree. In this photo you can see the freshly extracted tree next to a tree that will be extracted next year. The freshly extracted tree is 25 years old.
From that point forward they can extract further up each time. The tree in these photos is about 75 years old.
To make wine corks, the cork is boiled, and they stamp out the corks either by hand, or via machine. Here is an example of some corks stamped by a machine.
All in all a very cool tour!