Hoke wrote:For the record, Robin, nothing I said was meant as an insult to you. If you took it as such, or if it came across that way, then I'm sorry.
I didn't think so, Hoke, and I don't. The one small area in which I would take exception, if not offense, is your suggestion that I believe Amorim's position "because they're good guys." I've never said or written such a thing in an article or forum post, and I'm sure you know it.
The issue here, I guess, is conflating "Amorim" with "the cork industry." Yes, Amorim is one of Portugal's largest corporations, and certainly it's the world's leading producer of fine-wine corks. But it's not the only cork producer, and it can't control quality for its competitors.
What the new generation does say - and it strikes me as candid and fair - is this: "The cork industry was arrogant and ultimately careless in ignoring taint issues for as long as it did. The sudden increase in market share was a wakeup call." (Translation: We're not doing the things our fathers did.)
In its current status, Amorim makes the specific claim that, over the past six to eight years, it has focused massive attention (and Euros) on an effort to eliminate taint <i>from its own products</i> through a multi-step series of efforts that involve both quality control - from the forest to the shipping room - and new technologies. They claim to have eliminated taint entirely from their line of "technical corks" (composite "twin ends") and to have reduced return rates from tainted natural corks to near zero (far fewer than 1 return per million). In several days of visits that went far beyond a guided tour (most of it was spent interviewing both executives and tech types in bland conference rooms), I never felt that anyone ever ducked any question, however impudent; and I was given access to any papers or documentation that I requested. They made their sale, and, as you correctly note, no one is paying me to express that.
Yes, the cork industry has done some foolish and stupid things, and Amorim will be the first to acknowledge that. But at this point, Amorim's strategy, at least, involves stopping the further loss of market share (synthetics/screwcaps are steady at 16 percent, they said), not through PR or advertising but by making a sound product - which *is* technically feasible, although at a cost - and by making much of their technology available to competitors in the belief that job No. 1 for now is not to build their dominance of the industry (not that they wouldn't like to do that) but to make TCA a laboratory curioisty rarely seen in the wild.