Herdade de Maroteira is a 330 acre property located about 45 mins from Evora, encompassing vineyards, a beef cattle operation, oak groves (fattening areas for the famous black Iberian pigs of the region), cork groves, a winery and sheep operation. The winery produces some excellent products including wine made from the Syrah grapes planting 20 + years ago by the current owner/manager. The rain held off today as we loaded into 4 X 4’s and headed out from the winery to visit the estate and explore how cork is made. We drove through an area of small holdings raising everything from olives to oaks, beef, pork and rabbits. Farming co-ops buy farm produce and wine. Olives are taken to a local co-op to be pressed. Farmers then collect olive oil in the place of money.
The estate itself is gorgeous, a mixture of harvested grape vines, turning a burnished gold/red as the autumn daylight wanes and rolling hills covered with oak and cork trees.
One of the first stops was at the site of the remains of a megalithic burial structure called a Dolmen (photo below). They are associated with the transition from nomadic lives to the start of the agricultural revolution This one is thought to have been constructed by the Iberian Celts about 5000 years ago. A farm inhabitant accompanied us on part of the journey.
Our sturdy vehicles then transported us to an area of cork groves where we learned the ins and outs of the process. I had absolutely no idea where corks came from – my thought was out of a bottle ???? – the process is absolutely fascinating.
The cork tree is about 10 years old when the first harvest of what is called virgin cork is removed from the tree. The cork bark comes off in sheets as you can see in the photos. This first cut is very porous and is ground down to create a fibre that is made into everything from hats to bags to umbrellas to bathing suits. We saw them all in Evora shops including a cork bikini ????. Harvests are generally every 10 years and when the tree is 65 years old it finally starts growing the good thick cork that you can make the wine bottle corks from. This is the same bark that makes these trees resistant to fire, something that is very useful in the Mediterranean fire prone ecosystems.
The photos above show the colour of the tree after the cork bark is stripped. As it needs to come off in sheets, which it does quite nicely until branches reach a certain diameter, harvesting of all the bark doesn’t occur. The limit of harvesting can be seen in the tree below on the right. The number 0 on the tree indicates it was last harvested in 2020. Our visit to the Estate ended all too quickly and we headed into the nearby town Redondo for lunch in a local restaurant.
And what a lunch it was. Beginning with sourdough bread, olives, sardine paste and calamari, followed by an amazing tomato soup and salad – finishing with pork chops from the black Iberian pigs I have written about. I am not a fan of pork but this is absolutely amazing meat. A wow moment was the liberal use of fresh squeezed lime on the pork – ???? The promised rain had started when we left the restaurant mid afternoon, we were fortunate that the weather gods smiled on us during our time on the estate.
We leave for Tomar and then on to Coimbra tomorrow.
Very informative. No idea about cork origins.