Cap Classique producers have until 22 July to submit their wines for this year’s Amorim Cap Classique Challenge, which takes place in a milestone year for its sponsors, international cork company Amorim. Founded in 1870 on the banks of the Douro River at Vila Nova de Gaia, Amorim this year celebrates its 150th anniversary as a producer of cork stoppers, the natural product recognised as the essential partner to sparkling and other wines.
The natural relationship between clay and wine extends beyond the water-retention abilities and agreeable pH levels that make clay soils conducive to viticulture. For close on 2 700 years clay has been used to make vessels for the fermentation and holding of wine. Since those first dubious drops of grape juice were poured into clay pots by the winemakers of ancient Greece, Georgia and Rome, the containers have hardly changed in shape and size. Amphorae, as they are known, are today not only eye-catching aesthetic complements to wineries the world over, but represent a modern vinous movement aimed at capturing the natural purity of fermenting and fermented wine.
Portuguese cork producer Amorim is to help spearhead the Stellenbosch wine region’s commitment to fighting climate change after Stellenbosch became the first wine region in the Southern Hemisphere to sign the Porto Protocol, a global initiative originating in Portugal aimed at reducing carbon emissions and fighting climate change in agriculture regions.
Despite all the long-hours, sweat and hard-work, there is something magical about the harvest season. For us in the cork industry, it lies in the satisfaction of seeing the just-cut bark from the cork oaks arriving at our plants in southern Portugal to be processed. It smells of earth and fresh wood, a truly natural product from wild forests, each tree stripped of its bark every nine years.
