1 Belvado Essential wine has just escaped from triumph rates

Rio Frio, Portugal (AP) – American winemakers have something to celebrate: the corks that are exploiting are not subject to tariffs.

The cork comes from the spongy crust of cork oak, which is grown and harvested mainly in the Mediterranean basin. The Marco Commercial Agreement between the United States and the European Union highlighted the material as a “not available natural product.” Then, as of September 1, Cork joined a handful of other items, including generic pharmaceutical planes and products, which are exempt from a 15% rate in the United States in most EU products.

The carving of cork was vital for Portugal.

The European country is the world’s largest cork producer, which represents approximately half of global production.

Via News

Portuguese diplomats pressed for the exemption on both sides of the Atlantic. Patrick Spencer, Executive Director of the Natural Cork Council based in the United States, ran from Salem, Oregon, to Washington in June to explain the origins of Cork to the commercial officials of the United States and seek a tariff postponement.

The Wine Institute, which represents California winemakers, said he also pressed for the special dispensation.

Spencer said he was excited when a summary of the US agreement. UU. USed in August mentioned Cork.

“It was a great day in our neighborhood,” said Spencer, a “self -written” dork “.

More than cork

It is not clear if Cork is unique or if other natural products will be exempt from US tariffs in future commercial agreements. The United States Department of Commerce and the White House did not respond when News asked about tariff exemptions.

It is not even clear if the president of the tariffs, Donald Trump, put the imports of the 27 EU members and almost all countries will remain. At the end of last month, an United States Court of Appeals ruled that Trump had no right to impose his radical tariffs, although he left them in place while his administration appeals before the United States Supreme Court.

But if the tariffs remain in place, the cork can point out other exemptions to come. The United States Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, said During a Julio interview with CNBC that natural products such as mangoes or cocoa may be free of tariffs

United dependence

The United States is the second largest market for the Portuguese cork after France. In 2023, the United States imported cork for a value of $ 241 million of Portugal; A little more than 70% arrived in the form of wine plugs, liquors, olive oil, honey and other liquids, according to the natural council of Cork, a commercial group.

Cork also has other applications. NASA and SPACEX have used it for thermal protection in rockets. Cork spots are also used as a filling for sports fields and inserted into concrete on airport slopes to help absorb the shock of plane landings.

Although California has a climate similar to the Mediterranean, the United States has never developed a cork industry. There was an attempt to start one during World War II, and around 500 cork oaks of that period remain in the Campus of the University of California, Davis.

But the effort evaporated when the war ended. The problem: a cork tree takes 25 years to produce its first crust for harvest, and the initial performance is generally not high quality. After that, take the tree for about nine years to grow a new bark.

“Americans are not patient enough to wait for a tree that has been giving their first harvest for 25 years,” said Antonio Amorim, president and CEO of Corticeira Amorim in Portugal, one of the world’s largest cork companies.

The cork harvest is also an extremely specialized skill, since cutting a tree in the wrong way could kill it. Cork collectors are the best paid agricultural workers in Europe, Spencer said.

Hand harvest

Amorim, which exports cork to more than 100 countries, has more than 20 million cork trees distributed in more than 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) of forests.

On a recent day in Amorim’s Herdade de Rio Frio, a 40 kilometers (25 miles) farm southeast Lisbon, zigzagged crews on thin and pale grass between scattered cork trees, kicking dust.

The quiet forest echoed with the soft deaf noise of the workers’ axes. They gently pierced the cortex, feeling the thickness of the cork that could take off without damaging the trunk. The Portuguese have reaped cork in this way for more than 200 years.

The trees cortex came out in slabs of featherweight that workers, with the black hands of the natural tannins of the OAKs, thrown into a platform truck. It would go to the factories to be cut into strips and feed on a machine that hits the plugs.

Once the trees were naked, a woman painted a white “5” in the orange trunks, which indicates that they were stripped in 2025. The cork oaks of the cold river concrete, which are native to Portugal and can resist frequent droughts and summer scoring temperatures, were planted more than 100 years ago.

Put a cork in him

The sustainable crop process of cork and its biodegradability are two reasons why many American winemakers have plugged bottles after experimenting with closures made of aluminum, plastic and glass. In 2010, 53% of US premium wines. Uu. They used cork plugs; By 2022, that had increased to 64.5%, according to the Natural Cork Council.

Cork Taint, which gives the wine a funky flavor and is caused by a fungus in natural corks, was a big problem in the 1990s, and pushed many wine growers to aluminum screw caps and other closures, said Andrew Waterhouse, chemical and director of the Robert Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Sciences of the University of California, Davis.

The cork industry has largely solved that problem, Waterhouse said. Meanwhile, the wine industry occurred to it a new technology, such as screw covers that can imitate the cork in the amount of oxygen that they let a bottle in time.

Many wineries, including Trump Winery in Virginia, now use screw tapas and natural corks. Waterhouse said that screw covers generally make more sense for a wine like the pink, which does not intend to age, while the cork is the standard for aging wines.

“If you say, ‘Has this wine aged correctly?’ In any other condition, he did not age the same, ”said Waterhouse. “We are always trapped by history.”

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Durbin reported from Detroit.