Alentejo Cork & Wine Experience

Alentejo Cork & Wine Experience

Portugal produces over half the world's cork. Every stripped oak has a white number painted on its trunk — the last digit of the harvest year — because Portuguese law mandates nine years between harvests. Pliny the Elder wrote about cork stoppers in the 1st century AD. A 1st-century BC amphora found in Ephesus still contained wine, still sealed with cork. The same technology, the same tree. Alicante Bouschet — one of the world's only teinturier grapes with red flesh — found its true home here according to Jancis Robinson. Herdade do Esporão holds both a Michelin Star and a Michelin Green Star.