Organic Wine -Corks

Use of Natural Cork

Cork has been used for sealing wine bottles for over 300 years.
While the cork method of sealing bottles is not as 'fail safe' as other closures (such as crown seals on beer bottles); cork in fact makes a modest contribution to the character of wine. Fresh corks smell wonderful and impart special characteristics to the wine (much in  the way that oak barrels do), Cork is of course, a natural product (the bark from an oak tree – Quercus Suber), and thus the properties vary from one cork to another.

“Cork taint” is the unpleasant experience of the occasional cork that “goes off” but this is becoming rarer as cork manufacturers improve their processing techniques.

The use of cork to seal wine bottles is under review throughout most of the wine industry mainly to reduce costs (screwcaps are cheaper - especially for mass-produced wine) and to nullify the risk of cork taint.

Other 'corks' in common use are synthetic corks.  The main problem with these is that sometimes - if you have kept a wine for some length of time -  you might not be able to extract a synthetic cork out of a bottle without breaking it, because these corks have sometimes been known to set hard in the neck of the bottle.

At Harris Organic Wines we intend to continue using natural cork in all of our wines while we assure our customers that in the unlikely event that a bottle is spoiled or ‘corked’, it will be replaced or refunded*. We have a cork oak growing outside the cellar door here at the winery, have a look at it next time you are visiting the winery.

Remember corks have a lower carbon footprint than other types of closures.

*Ask us about our DIAM corks! We use these in all our wines. These have no cork taint, guaranteed.

Yes, we have a stock of used corks available for our valued customers for cork boards and other projects.