Cork grows on trees, did you know that? I certainly didn’t, but while on a week long stay in the tiny port of Carviero Portugal I discovered this fact. At 6.30 am I was picked up by a slightly dillapidated land rover, just outside my hotel. I climbed in to a smell of slightly leaking or burning oil from a motor that had seen better years. My guide had a small hedgerow growing under his nose and smiled eagerly as we took off along the cramped streets, away from the sleeping sea. A discussion about the state of the economy since protugal joined the E.U. and his family kept us busy ’til the next pick-up at a range of high rise monstrosities reminsicent of the Costa Del Sol. Some English couple on a honeymoon filled the rear and then some Canadians I think.

We set out along a standard dual carriageway for half an hour before a right turn lead us into sun-burned fields and hedgerows. By now we were a convoy of four land rovers in equal states of degredation. As we approached a morning tea stop – after visiting the remnants of a castle – we pulled in to a by-way . We all clambered out and were given the run down about Cork trees. We stood around in the humid air keeping under the shade to avoid the prickly sun while our guide ran us through how the bark of the tree is harvested – after 20 or so years of growth, before getting turned into what we know as cork. This is what gets used to cork bottles , to make ‘cork boards’ etc etc. Twenty Years!

Now when I engage a corkscrew and withdraw a cork with that hollow sucking sound I think of Portugal – but it’s getting harder and harder to find bottles with corks these days – they’re all plastic- better or so they say. I pour out the golden fermented grape juice into a wine glass so clear I can see tomorrow through it and the let the wine talk to my tongue, telling me stories with bouquets of peach and lemon with hints of acidity…….