Cork Montado Harvest

Portugal produces around half the world's cork, and almost all of it comes off trees in the montado - a managed savanna of widely spaced cork and holm oak over pasture and cereal, grazed by cattle, pigs and sheep, which is a farming system several centuries old and one of the more biodiverse agricultural landscapes in Europe. Cork is the bark. It is stripped by hand between about mid-May and August, when the tree is growing and the bark separates cleanly, by tiradores using a long-handled axe to score and lever off whole panels without cutting the living layer beneath - a skill that takes years and is among the best-paid agricultural work in the country. A tree is first stripped at around twenty-five years and then every nine years for up to two centuries. The year of stripping is painted on each trunk. Damage the inner layer and the tree is ruined.

What's there

• The stripped trunks - orange-red bare wood below the remaining bark, with a painted year.
• The tiradores - workers levering panels off by hand with long axes.
• The montado - spaced oaks over grazed pasture, a centuries-old farming system.
• The nine-year cycle - each tree stripped once every nine years for up to two hundred.

When to go

Mid-May to August is the legal harvest window and the only time stripping is visible. Estate visits and demonstrations run through operators, mainly around Coruche, Grândola and Évora.

Good to know

The montado is private working farmland - watch from public roads or book a proper visit rather than walking in. Alentejo summer heat during harvest is extreme. Harvest visits need arranging in advance. Stripping is skilled work, not a demonstration laid on for visitors.

Nearby

Coruche has a cork museum; the Alentejo montado runs from the Tagus to the Algarve hills.