Orlando Wines, a famous Australian wine producer and now part of the famous Pernod Ricard group, and the local branch of the Cork Supply Group, led by Miguel Costa Alemão, organized the first cork extraction carried out in South Australia, specifically in Barossa Valley, the most famous wine region in the country.
For the first time, 64 cork oaks planted 43 years ago, in 1970, by Colin Gramp, great-grandson of Orlando Wines founder, Johann Gramp, were stripped.
Colin Gramp was one of Australia's winemaking revolutionaries with the introduction of temperature-controlled fermentation. In order to make the Orlando Wines winery the only producer in the world of corks for its wines, it ordered the planting of about 64 cork oaks in three different locations in the Barossa Valley, most of them along the Jacob Stream (Jacob's Creek).
Taking into account the time required to produce quality cork for use in stoppers, these cork oaks had never been stripped before.
For four days, the Portuguese Frederico Lima Mayer, from Cork Supply Portugal, and the harvesters from Alentejo, Luís Jorge and António Dionísio, stripped all the trees, which showed excellent vigor and vegetative health.
The trees were previously irrigated to facilitate the extraction of cork, taking into account the dry period of the year at the site – which corresponds to the end of July in Portugal – and the operation ended up revealing a superior quality cork (mass/genetic), demonstrating that the Portuguese cork oak (Quercus suber L.) finds good vegetation and production conditions in this region.
The initiative aroused great interest from the local community and wine-growing family of Barossa Valley, one of the best quality wine producing regions in Australia, with the presence of Colin Gramp himself, now 93 years old, in addition to the Consul of Portugal in Australia Sofia Batalha.
Within nine years, cork will be removed again to start production of the first Australian cork stoppers, a historic fact that will forever mark the future of that region, which today ranks 7th in the world's wine production.
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