Cork Supply is continuing to deliver value to the U.S. wine industry, bringing the cork harvest to California universities this month. The noted packaging closure supplier will bring together education and wine industry stakeholders, media and students for conversation, celebration and learning at live events, which will be open to the public. Looking ahead, Cork Supply will build on the demonstrations by sending three scholarship students from U.S. agriculture-focused universities to experience the cork harvest in Portugal in June.

Events at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo (May 28) and the University of California, Davis (May 30) center on harvesting mature cork oaks on the schools’ campuses. With cork oaks only eligible for harvest approximately every nine years, the demonstrations are truly rare events: the last cork harvest at UC Davis took place at least 30 years ago, per campus representatives. Focused on student engagement and education, events will complement classroom education and emphasize cork closures’ sustainability and beneficial uses for the wine industry.

A raw material that is versatile, regenerative and biodegradable, cork is particularly relevant today in light of the climate crisis and growing awareness for the importance of leveraging renewable resources in products across industries:

Cork Oak Facts

• The cork oak is the only tree whose bark regenerates itself after harvesting, leaving trees intact for future harvests and carbon sequestration.
• Living up to 200 years and harvested every nine years following maturity, cork oaks are impressive CO2 repositories, drawing down greenhouse gas emissions throughout their lives.
• Following harvest, a cork tree accelerates its absorption of CO2 to regrow its bark, storing up to five times more CO2.(1)

Cork oak forests—known as the Montado in Portuguese—are an example of a nature-based climate solution, defined by the World Wildlife Federation as an ecosystem that captures and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, and does double duty by providing vital habitat for wildlife. Cork oak forests are home to hundreds of animal and plant species, many of them endangered and globally retain up to 14 million tons of CO2 annually. (2)

This impressive volume of absorption from cork forests annually is equivalent to the emissions from 35,805,945,507 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle, 15,429,072,890 pounds of coal burned, or 1,825,735 homes' energy use for one year (3). Given that a significant share of wine’s carbon footprint generally derives from packaging and distribution(4), utilizing cork closures can drive down packaged wine’s overall carbon footprint since closures are carbon-negative.

Cork Supply is a leading provider of innovative and best-in-class cork closures. The company’s latest product introduction is Legacy, a game-changing innovation that is the only natural cork closure on the market guaranteed to be consistent in oxygen transmission rate (OTR). Launched at Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento in January 2024, Legacy is the culmination of over a decade of R&D and investment in creating the perfect closure.

For more information and to register for Cork Supply’s cork harvesting events, visit corksupply.com/us and follow along with the events on Instagram at instagram.com/cork_supply.

About Harv 81 Group (previously The Cork Supply Group)

Experts in closures, oak and labels, Harv 81 Group is the starting point of a culture of expertise within the winemaking industry. With a deep commitment to quality, the Harv 81 Group supports customers through several entities that collectively provide consistent and reliable solutions to leading global wine and spirits producers: Cork Supply, Tonnellerie Ô and Studio Labels. harv81.com

About Cork Supply

Cork Supply specializes in natural and technical closures for still and sparkling wines through its innovation, technology, global infrastructure and team. A technological and innovative specialist in natural and technical closures, it has 40+ years’ experience and was the first to launch a natural closure free from detectable TCA and with an individual guarantee. With four production units in Portugal and five in key wine markets (USA, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, and China), Cork Supply produces cork closures in Portugal before distributing them to the global markets.

Cork Supply’s U.S. outfit is based in Benicia, CA in the heart of the North Coast winegrowing region. Cork Supply’s California cork harvest initiatives and student scholarships align with the company’s Harvesting for the Future strategy, an overarching approach to better business that includes GHG emissions reduction, efficient use of raw materials, and the incorporation of cork manufacturing by-products into innovative new products.

With continuous learning and R&D key priorities, together with social responsibility and sustainability, Cork Supply continues to demonstrate its promise: trusted from forest to bottle. corksupply.com/us

1 - SOURCE: Gil, L.; Pereira, C., Silva, P. “Cork and CO2 fixation.” SUBERWOOD: New challenges for integration of cork oak forests and products, Universidad de Huelva, Spain, 20-22 October, 2005.

2 - SOURCE: Gil, L. “Cork: a strategic material.” Frontiers in Chemistry. 2014 April 11; 2:16.

3 - SOURCE: United States Environmental Protection Agency, Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator

4 - SOURCE: Luís Pinto da Silva, Joaquin C.G. Esteves da Silva. “Evaluation of the carbon footprint of the life cycle of wine production: A review.” Cleaner and Circular Bioeconomy (CLCB), Volume 2, Aug. 2022.