Things that make me go "huh?"

It’s emails like this from my Etoile post that make me go “Huh?!”:

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I don't get it
Why break the cork tradition thing with champaignes when these corks are more suited for champaignes than crowns! I kinda like the cork better and crowns are harmful to the environment. Why don't we give mother nature a little respect.
--Posted by lyle to The Zinquisition at 8/17/2006 11:31:42 PM
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No, really…
Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t “get it”…as in how do you figure that, anyway?

What about crown caps is hurting the environment?
Yes, they’re metallic and the metal had to be mined at one time…but can be recycled almost indefinitely I believe – so I don’t think crown caps could be construed as really harmful to the environment. Plus he’s kinda missed the point – for most of the production time of these sparkling wines they’re already under a crown cap, and only when finally disgorged and hit with the dosage (if any) do they finally get a “traditional” cork.

So crowns are most definitely suited to champagnes and sparkling wines, especially if you consider that these bottles will be opened and recorked before they are sent off to the consumer…
…and would mean that if you’re using natural cork throughout the process, you’d have to consume twice as many corks…
…and strip twice as much cork bark off of trees…
…and use twice as much wire for the wire baskets they’d need to secure the corks…
…and potentially have twice as much wine spoiled by TCA “corked” wines…
…and wouldn’t have as much room for the yeast sediment to fall into the neck of the bottle for disgorgement…
…and potentially have twice as many closure failures as you would otherwise with just one corking (my experience with champagne corks is that they rarely fail,but I wouldn't want to up my losses during an ageing peiod that may last several years)...
…and more labor and energy being used for the corking & wiring of the bottles, which is a much more complex set of movements than just capping…
…etc., none of which strikes me as being very respectful to Mother Nature.

All of that is bypassed when keeping the crown cap at the final adjustment of the wine and final "dress" of the product for the consumer, as well as the potential problems using natural cork could cause during ageing and riddling mentioned above.

Now the Portuguese cork manufacturers have lately been getting the rabid fringe of the greens to jump to their defense against crown caps and screw caps (and pretty much any closure not made from their "natural cork") by playing on fears that the cork oak forests will suddenly disappear when people start buying wines with screw caps, etc., which I just don't see as a reasonable scenario. [see this peopleandplanet post for details of the WWF position of "...three quarters of the Western Mediterranean's cork oak forests could be lost within 10 years, threatening an economic and environmental crisis, unless the industry took action to support the cork stoppers market."]
In fact the WWF states that in the next decade we'll see "that up to two million hectares of cork oak forests - around half the size of Switzerland - are at risk of desertification and forest fires due to a predicted decline in the cork stoppers market..." which is true speculation and fear mongering.
And certainly they never offered much in the way of proof of that suggested outcome by the cork conglomerates...

Perhaps Lyle could’ve held it to “I kinda like the cork better…”, which would be a perfectly fine statement to make, and would be much more persuasive to any producer reading this blog.