Head deliberately south and mostly east out of Portugal's capital city of Lisbon and you'll eventually find yourself in the country's Alentejo Region. It's a different world. As you pass across the Tagus River over the massively long Vasco da Gama Bridge, the hills and the trams and the fado and the really, really excellent pastéis de nata fade away and are replaced with what I'd classify as decidedly more Mediterranean surroundings. Green and brown landscapes created equally by the sun's warmth. History reaching further back than Lisbon can possibly take you. Agriculture. Vineyards. Olive trees. Cattle. Amazing stuff. Things you don't find at home. At least not my home.
Stare out the window of your car or bus or whatever other type of transportation is taking you out of Portugal's capital city into a more relaxed world and you might notice a sight that will likely cause you to do a double take. There are groves in the Alentejo like no other that I have ever seen. Trees with naked rust red or scorched black trunks topped by gnarled branches that look like they are coated with knitted coverings. Seriously, it looks like someone has covered the limbs of the trees about six or seven feet off the ground with something to keep the trees warm in the night. And every so often, there are digits painted on the nude trunks.
It's a bizarre sight. But not entirely unexpected.
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| Knitted coverings. I'm telling you... |
One of the reasons I was so looking forward to spending time in the Alentejo Region was the opportunity to see cork trees (or cork oaks as I found out on this trip) in their natural state. It didn't take long for me to realize on our van ride from Lisbon to Évora that those strange groves of trees I was seeng in between the vineyards and cattle and olive trees had to be cork trees. I knew enough to know that cork is harvested by the bark being stripped from the tree, so putting two and two together had to mean that I had found from my van window seat what I wanted to see in the Alentejo.
And soon after we got there, it was time to get up closer and personal-er.
Before I go further, I have to say that seeing cork trees up close was for me the most anticipated activity on our Portugal itinerary. I know it sounds kind of crazy, but it's totally true. It completely didn't measure up to what I envisioned it might be and yet it was awesome just the same. I'm fascinated by these trees. You could drop me off in a cork oak forest and just leave me there for hours. And maybe I say that now considering that is NOT what happened to me in Portugal. Not even close, as it turns out.
Portugal and cork have a special relationship. There are essentially seven cork producing countries in the world and Portugal's output beats all of the other six combined. This tiny little country on the Atlantic produces more than half of the entire world's cork!! How amazing is that? Now granted, the best climate for growing cork (based on the other six cork-producing countries - Spain, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and France) is pretty much right in the area of the world where Portugal is located, but Spain is like four times the size of Portugal is a distant, distant second place.
Cork is some serious stuff in Portugal. In 2020, exporting cork generated more than $1.8 billion (with a B) of revenue for the country. And in case you are wondering...yes, it's pretty much all centered around the wine industry. All the best cork is used for keeping wine in bottles (although I guess there are other alcoholic beverages that use cork stoppers also), with the lesser quality stuff and the leftovers used for thinks like building products, shoes and all manner of souvenirs sold in and around the town of Évora. Cork is definitely the thing in the Alentejo.
To get a better look at this stuff, we got up one morning, boarded a bus that had about six or seven times as many seats as there were people on the bus, and visited a farm. Yes, a farm.
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| What's happening down on the farm? A lot as it turned out. |
There is such irony here. If you texted me or called me one morning and asked if I wanted to go to a farm in the United States somewhere near where I live, I would likely laugh and then respond with something like "why would I ever want to go to a farm?" But a farm on vacation? Yes, please!!!! It's crazy, I know. It was, I assure you, all about the cork oaks.
Now, I will say that I thought we were going specifically to see a cork farm. Turns out that wasn't true. But I'd do it again anyway.
After a 45 minute or so bus ride west of Évora to the town of Montemor-O-Novo, we found ourselves at Herdade do Freixo do Meio, a 600 hectare cooperative farm supported by the patronage of more than 150 local families. The farm has been operating for over 30 years and today grows vegetables and fruit; raises chickens, sheep, cows and the Alentejo's famous black pigs; and harvests olives and, of course, cork from their own orchards.
The cooperative is completely organic, but lately they have taken their farming beyond organic. Our guide, Bernardo, made the point that you can use all organic farming methods and still irreparably damage the land that's producing food to keep you alive. To avoid doing just that, they are rotating crops and grazing to allow the land time to recover. He took us to an egg-producing chicken coop with six separate sides and six separate yards attached to it. The chickens feed in each section in succession, allowing the other five to rest while the birds are elsewhere.
Bernardo told us that the farm is operating on renewable two year leases and has been for its lifetime. The lease payment is essentially nothing but there's a lot of sweat and hard work and money invested in this place. While the risk of their landlord pulling the plug seems remote, I can't imagine how devastating it would be if they did. No way I'd be comfortable with that level of risk.
So we are gathered in a plaza of sorts at the farm and get introduced to Bernardo and Racquel who are going to show us around the place before setting us up with a traditional farm lunch, and they ask us what we want to see. Sensing the real possibility that we might get enough votes in our group for chickens or pigs or olives or something to consume all our time on the property (and still not completely disabused of the notion that this is not just a cork farm visit), I offer that I'd like to see a cork tree. Cool. Got my request in and acknowledged. We set out to see a cork tree first. Specifically, the cork tree above; the one with a big zero painted on its trunk.
This is where we learned about the oaks thing. Cork trees are acorn bearing.
With the benefit of hindsight, Bernardo's question about what we wanted to see was strange, because from my perspective we saw the entire farm with some time to spare. Maybe it was a translation thing...
The cork oak we stood in front of that day was likely between 100 and 150 years old. The main trunk of the tree was pretty much naked, having been stripped of its very own home grown cork cover the prior year (2020). That explained the zero on the tree; cork trees are stripped every nine years and rather than keeping a log of when each tree was last harvested, the tree owners just have a number painted on the trunk corresponding to the last digit of the year that the tree was last harvested.
I imagined that we would be treated to some sort of demonstration here. I was way wrong. Cork harvesting or stripping is not a spectator sport. It's a highly skilled, highly paid job that can only be done in a few months of the year, namely the summer. And it was not the summer when we were there.
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| Cork souvenirs, anyone? There's plenty of selection in Évora, including whole piece of bark. |
You might be able to see in the second photograph above evidence of earlier harvests. The bark on the left of the photograph is clearly older than that in the middle. The prior harvest of our tree cut off way more than the 2020 harvest did.
Herdade do Freixo do Meio does not harvest their own cork. They subcontract it all to a band of axe-wielding cork strippers, which is completely appropriate because handheld axes with a sharpened chisel-like implement on the end of the axe handle is the tool used to strip cork off trees. Removal starts by chopping around and down the tree trunk and using the back of the axe head to tap on the bark to loosen it. From there, the end of the axe is used to wedge the pieces of bark off the tree, usually in a single sheet.
The cork is taken off site to be processed while the tree is labeled with a big white number so everyone know the year it was unceremoniously denuded. Our tree's trunk was a pale pink in color. I don't understand how the colors change as the cork grows back but we did see fields of trees labeled with a "3" that were so black they looked burnt.
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| Cork tree on a street corner in Évora. |
Getting close to a cork tree isn't all about the learning and the visual, though. There had to be some touching. And there was. After all, this bark begged to be touched.
I hate to say that it felt like cork because, well duh, that's exactly what it was but honestly, it felt like cork. It was a little squeaky like cork is. I know this stuff would likely end up a bottle of wine one day keeping that precious liquid inside and I know it's harvested for that exact purpose but it's still weird to touch a tree wrapped in cork. It's wild!!! Seriously. It doesn't seem real. All other trees have scratchy bark. Cork trees have spongy, squeaky cork. Strange stuff. Really odd.
The farm we visited elects to have all their trees stripped in a single year. I guess that makes it a lot easier to keep track of and to get folks on and off the farm. It must provide such a boon to the farm's fortunes every nine years (followed by eight way leaner years, I guess). It seemed like from our bus or van seats riding around Portugal that most orchards opted for a similar strategy. When we saw stripped cork trees they all seemed to be in the same state of nakedness or coverage.
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| The lobby of our hotel in Évora, with decorative cork bark and cork stools. |
There are a couple of blurry to very blurry pictures in this post. They are that way because they were taken with an iPhone from the seat of a bus through a tinted window while traveling at anywhere from 30 to 60 or maybe more kilometers per hour. They are not intended to be artistic, although I wouldn't debate that there's a certain graphic quality I like to at least the cover photo of this post.
One of those blurry pictures (the one a couple of pictures up from this paragraph) shows the yard of a cork processing plant. I had no idea we'd be driving past one of these things but I'm glad we did and I'm glad I had the iPhone at the ready. This place was enormous. I was thinking it was like a giant Lowe's store with a parking lot like three times the size of a typical parking lot and there were stacks of cork everywhere but that doesn't even do it justice. It was even bigger than that. The amount of cork just sitting around outdoors waiting to be processed was staggering.
I know I already said that I was looking forward to our cork farm day more than any other on this trip. I also know that I said it was awesome (and it was!!!) despite the fact that we really got to see just one tree up close at the farm and a couple more on a street corner in Évora. It was not what I expected. I wanted to see cork removed by professional cork strippers in front of our very eyes. There was absolutely no way that was happening. Having said that, this was a still one of my best memories of Portugal. I will never remove a cork from a bottle of wine again without thinking of Portugal. It's the squeaking. I'm telling you.
Remember we were promised lunch by Bernardo and Racquel? Yeah, we ate that. It was a cozido, or Portuguese stew made up of boiled meats and vegetables. We ate a lot of great food in Portugal. Sure, some of the bacalao croquettes were better than others and I can say that about the pastéis and the sardines also. The cozido? I'm not trying to appear ungrateful but I'm not longing for that dish as I write this.
The vegetables? Pretty good. The sausages? Also not complaining about those, despite the meat having, shall we say, a rougher grind than I prefer my sausages to have. Acorns? Yep, acorns. And they were good. Maybe they were cork acorns? Maybe not. But I'd eat them again, I guess.
Portugal is a little famous as an offal eating nation. I don't think we had any of that in our cozido but there was definitely a piece of meat that was maybe a piece of ear? And a huge lump of fat like about an inch long. I ate the stew. It was hot and filling. But I left enough in the bowl so it wouldn't look like I deliberately was avoiding eating the fat, the potential ear and the one other questionable piece of meat or cartilage or whatever it was.
Loved the cork trees. Those will stay with me forever. The cozido? Maybe I'll drop that one from the memory banks. The cork was enough. Well enough. I'm telling you...drop me off in a field of cork trees some afternoon and I'm a happy guy. Just pack me a lunch without fat and ear.
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| The large piece of fat is on the left in the front. Not touching that. And yes, I know I'm a baby. |
How We Did It
We didn't pick Herdade do Freixo do Meio as a destination. We decided to take our trip to Portugal with G Adventures, who we have loved from Ecuador, Kenya, Tanzania and Peru, and the farm was on their itinerary. Honestly, I have not figured out how to get there on our own but the farm does have a website and it's in both Portuguese and English. They also have rooms to rent if you wanted to stay on property. Click on the link on the first iteration of their name in the body of this post.
If you can't make it to a farm with cork trees or can't just stop on the side of the road and gaze at them from afar, there are two cork oaks in the city of Évora on the southwest corner of the traffic circle right outside the Porta do Raimundo in the city wall. If it makes no sense to be directed to a corner of a circle, I hope clicking the link in this paragraph makes more sense. They are in the southwest corner, I swear.
Finally, if you want to watch an awesome video of cork being stripped from some trees, watch this.
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