Cork stoppers are the most famous product of the cork industry. It is the most produced and most exported. More than 12 billion bottles of wine are closed every year with cork, keeping all the qualities of this drink intact for centuries. The cork stopper has been the closure par excellence of wine for many years, chosen by more than 70% of producers. Cork’s relationship with wine began in ancient Egypt as a closure for amphorae.
According to Executive Director Peter Weber of the Cork Quality Council, consumers still need help understanding and appreciating the environmental and social benefits of natural cork over plastic stoppers and screwcaps.
“The fact is that cork is a 100 percent renewable and sustainable natural resource, harvested every nine years without damaging the tree. It not only provides important CO2retention, a crucial tool to fight climate change, it also provides one of the world’s 36 most important biodiversity hotspots. In the era of climate change, education about natural cork’s environmental and social benefits is becoming more and more of a focus, and we still have work to do to fully engage the public on this topic,”
In addition to cork being seen as an indicator of wine quality by the majority of wine consumers, surveys showed that natural cork is the closure of choice for wine purchased at a restaurant, wine purchased as a gift, and wine purchased to bring to a dinner party.
Some of the reasons people stated for preferring cork were led by the idea that natural cork evokes an important sense of heritage, while the enjoyment of opening wine sealed with a cork, the “pop” and the “ritual” creating a unique distinctiveness at the moment of consumption were also cited.
Also importantly, wine lovers found cork to be conducive to wine aging, a marker to check the quality of the brand before purchasing, and an indicator of overall quality.
Gabrielle and Anthony Poston are avid wine lovers and wine country explorers.
Their passion for wine, and knowledge of winery locations and attributes, caused friends and family to frequently ask for recommendations on “which wineries” to visit.
They began to realize that they, like so many others, were recommending and visiting the same wineries repeatedly. One serendipitous moment in France, with a map in hand, unable to find the champagne house that they wanted to visit, they realized there needs to be a better way.
Gabrielle proposed the idea of creating a website that shared their travel experiences and included a searchable tool that allowed friends, family and ultimately users to make more informed decisions on finding wineries that fit their preferences.
WhichWinery.com now boasts over 20K+ wineries across 47 countries and is the world’s first winery based, travel site that connects each winery’s unique qualities with user preferences, allowing users to find wineries, plan and share trips utilizing the trip planner tool, track their visits and continue to learn about the world of wine.
They’ve launched a VIP service to accommodate clientele who want an elevated experience of allowing us to plan their winery trip - whether that means winery visits, transportation, lunch, accommodations or all of the above.
Lisa Niver is a travel expert, writer, artist, entrepreneur, and on-camera host who has explored 96 countries. Niver has established a following through her written and video content, garnering over one million video views on YouTube, Amazon Fire Tv and Roku.
Niver is the founder of a top 100 travel blog, We Said Go Travel, that reaches more than 200,000 annually and is in the top 1/8 of the top 1% of all sites in the United States. In her tri-annual international travel writing competitions, she has published nearly 2000 writers from 75 countries.
She was invited to the United Nations as a Champions of Humanity ambassador, to the red carpet at the Oscars with United Airlines and to New Orleans for a project with American Express and Starwood Hotels. Her recent stories include Dutch designer villas for Luxury Magazine, interviewing Fabien Cousteau for Delta Sky, skiing with the blind for Sierra and scuba diving in the Solomon Islands for Smithsonian.
She also contributes to USA Today, Wharton Business Magazine, the Jewish Journal and is verified on Twitter. Niver was a 2012 nominee for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching and a 2014 nominee for the Charles Bronfman Prize.