Terrane Magazine · Issue 01 · Montemor-o-Novo, Évora, Portugal

Corte do Sobreiro

the cork oak's enclosure

Subject of this issue Nine Years

A season's cut, stacked to season. Six months in the open before it is boiled.
A season's cut, stacked to season. Six months in the open before it is boiled.

A cork oak is stripped once every nine years and lives about two hundred. A man who strips cork will work the same tree perhaps five times in his life, and will hand it on. Corte do Sobreiro keeps time in nine-year units. Everything here — the debts, the marriages, the paint on the trunks — is scheduled against that interval.

00

The Ground

The Alentejo is a peneplain — a surface worn flat. The rock beneath it is Palaeozoic schist and granite, folded into mountains some three hundred million years ago and ground down ever since. What remains is a floor tilted so gently that a day's walk changes your elevation by the height of a house. Corte do Sobreiro sits at 214 metres and there is nothing to climb.

The soils are thin, acid, and low in organic matter. Rain falls between November and March and almost not at all afterwards; by June the ground has set to a crust and stays that way until autumn. Ploughed and cropped continuously, land like this is exhausted within a generation.

The cork oak tolerates it. Deep-rooted, drought-adapted, and insulated by a bark it regrows after fire — or after a man with an axe. The montado is what is made of a place where nothing else will grow at scale: the trees thinned to perhaps forty to the hectare so each has water enough, grass beneath them for stock, pigs let in under the canopy in autumn for the acorns. Three yields from one ground, none of them large.

It is not a forest and never was. It is a two-hundred-year-old argument with a poor soil, and the nine-year interval is one of its terms.

the well the cut, stacked the holding oven hives to the Vendas Novas road, nine kilometres N 0 500 m
The holding, drawn from the track. Nine kilometres of dirt road, one well, and the seasoning yard where the cut is stacked. Everything else is montado.
01

The Montado

The montado. Trees far enough apart that a cart passes between them, and grass enough beneath for stock.
The montado. Trees far enough apart that a cart passes between them, and grass enough beneath for stock.
Stripped this May. The cork will not be touched again until the tree has had nine summers.
Stripped this May. The cork will not be touched again until the tree has had nine summers.
Nine kilometres of track off the Vendas Novas road. There is no other way in.
Nine kilometres of track off the Vendas Novas road. There is no other way in.
02

The Calendar

The last digit of the year it was cut, in white paint. Every trunk carries one. The whole montado is a calendar.
The last digit of the year it was cut, in white paint. Every trunk carries one. The whole montado is a calendar.
Left, cut this season. Right, cut years ago and gone grey. The difference is how the village keeps time.
Left, cut this season. Right, cut years ago and gone grey. The difference is how the village keeps time.
03

The Cut

The machado. Curved so the blade never reaches the cambium — damage that and the tree gives nothing for the rest of its life.
The machado. Curved so the blade never reaches the cambium — damage that and the tree gives nothing for the rest of its life.
The crew arrives in May and works while the tree is in sap. Among the best-paid agricultural labour in the world, and the least replaceable.
The crew arrives in May and works while the tree is in sap. Among the best-paid agricultural labour in the world, and the least replaceable.
04

The Holding

Whitewash goes on every spring, over the last coat, and over the coat before that.
Whitewash goes on every spring, over the last coat, and over the coat before that.
The holding was built around this well and has never outgrown it.
The holding was built around this well and has never outgrown it.
One oven, fired with the trimmings too poor to sell. The bread is a by-product of the cork.
One oven, fired with the trimmings too poor to sell. The bread is a by-product of the cork.
Hives cut from the first strip — the coarse cork no bottler will take.
Hives cut from the first strip — the coarse cork no bottler will take.
05

The People

She holds the only written record of which trunk was cut in which year. The ledger is bound in cork.
She holds the only written record of which trunk was cut in which year. The ledger is bound in cork.
The baker. Her oven has burned nothing but cork for as long as she has had it.
The baker. Her oven has burned nothing but cork for as long as she has had it.
The beekeeper. His hives are the part of the tree that was never worth money.
The beekeeper. His hives are the part of the tree that was never worth money.
06

The Nine-Year Interval

  • First strip at ~25 years yields cortiça virgem — coarse, cracked, fit only for granulate.
  • The second strip, nine years later, is still poor. Only from the third does the tree give amadia, the smooth cork of stoppers.
  • Every stripped trunk is painted with the last digit of the year. The whole montado is a calendar.
  • A freshly stripped trunk is deep ochre-red. It fades to grey-brown over about a year.
  • Tiradores — the strippers — are among the highest-paid agricultural workers in the world. Damage the cambium and the tree never recovers.
  • Planks are stacked in the open and seasoned about six months before boiling.

Everything above is true of cork as it is worked in the Alentejo. Only Corte do Sobreiro is invented.

07

From Sobreiro

  • Numbered Trunk Tee

    apparel

    Numbered Trunk Tee

    The mark a stripper leaves, worn on the back. Printed on undyed cotton.

  • magazine

    TERRANE 01 — Corte do Sobreiro

  • print

    Numbered Trunk, No. 1

    The painted digit. Single image, wide margin. Named by the digit, not by a year.

  • cork

    Cork Flask Sleeve

    From the shepherd's cantil. Virgin cork, the grade too coarse for stoppers.

  • pantry

    Montado Honey

    Cork-hive honey. Label carries the stripping digit.

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