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Subject: WWF Press briefing

How buying wine bottles with cork stoppers helps
Mediterranean communities and forests

As wine sales increase in the lead up to Christmas, parts of the Mediterranean are facing an environmental and rural crisis because many wine-makers continue the switch from natural cork stoppers to the plastic and screw top alternatives.

More than 15 billion cork stoppers are made every year to supply the international wine market. The cork industry in the Mediterranean supplies more than 99 per cent of the world's cork.

Cork harvesting is crucial for rural communities whose economies are dependent on the activity and the wildlife which live in the forest, including the Iberian lynx and the
barbary deer.

Plastic and screw top alternatives to natural cork stoppers could jeopardize the future of Mediterranean cork oak forests. To fight the rising menace of cork replacements, WWF asks wine consumers this holiday season to remember to choose wine bottles with natural cork stoppers.

PRESS BRIEFING

MONDAY 16TH DECEMBER
11 h 00
Meeting room, 4th Floor,
WWF Mediterranean

Via Po 25/C, Rome

Pedro Regato, Head of the forest unit at WWF Mediterranean Programme Office, and Eduardo Goncalves, co-ordinator of the WWF cork conservation project will speak of the uses of cork, values of the cork forests in the Mediterranean, and the wildlife dependent on them before giving WWF's message for this holiday season!

A new WWF video release on the topic will also be shown.

ROME
DECEMBER 9, 2002

For more information :

Sampreethi Aipanjiguly, Communications Officer, WWF Mediterranean Programme, Tel: +(39) 06 844 97 224, saipanjiguly@wwfmedpo.org

[This message was edited by Pauline on December 21, 2002 at 11:45 AM.]

Similarly, it's very likely only the fact that we eat cows that has kept the species alive -- something not often thought of.

Bill

quote:

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Originally posted by Bill Thayer:
Similarly, it's very likely only the fact that we eat cows that has kept the species alive -- something not often thought of.
Bill

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Such a great observation, Bill. And think how expensive leather would be if we didn't raise beef cattle.

Deborah Horn
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Marketing Solutions for Health Care

Zak started a post on this same topic a few weeks back:
Link to post on cork vs. plastic for wine

Pauline from Slow Travelers

A corked wine is a wine spoiled by the bacteria that lives naturally in all cork. A wine with a cork is a different thing. Your headline on the opriginal post in this posting really would set off any wine geek , which is a good thing to do!

If life is an opera by Puccini... I want to be Calaf!