On the road to Ronda

Nov 5, found us on our way to explore Ronda, a mountaintop city that sits dramatically above a deep gorge. This gorge (El Tajo) separates the city’s circa-15th-century new town from its old town, dating to Moorish rule.

The day started out nice enough as we wound our way thru the mountains, where we saw many of these "white towns".

 this was a rather prickly looking fellow

the clouds started moving in - that is the Mediterranean on the horizon

 it looks like a very difficult land to make a living off 

the rains had started by the time we reached this place.  There were apparently caves here where you could see prehistoric cave paintings, but we were not equipped for the task

Ronda at last, the rain was coming down and a cold wind was blowing

Views from the Puente Nuevo (new bridge) - from the 15th century new!!  It crosses the El Tajo gorge and joins the old town with the new town.  The gorge is 68 meters at its widest and 120 meters deep.

Before leaving town we toured Plaza de Toros, the local bull ring built between 1779 and 1785.

the bullpen

the horse ring

the chutes leading to the ring

the bull ring, at 66 meters across it is the largest sand ring

steps leading up to the seating - each tile had a different picture painted on it all related to bullfighting

Taking another route back we went over another mountain pass

Condors were circling high above the mountains

Clouds were getting lower

More white villages

sheep grazing in a valley

 Then we came upon this - these are cork oaks.  

A little info about cork oaks:

The tree forms a thick, rugged bark containing high levels of suberin. Over time the cork cambium layer of bark can develop considerable thickness and is usually harvested every 9 years to produce cork. The harvesting of cork does not harm the tree, in fact, no trees are cut down during the harvesting process. Only the bark is extracted, and a new layer of cork regrows, making it a renewable resource.  Cork oaks live about 150 to 250 years.  Virgin cork (or 'male' cork) is the first cork cut from generally 25-year-old trees. Another 9 to 12 years is required for the second harvest, and a tree can be harvested about twelve times in its lifetime. Cork harvesting is done entirely without machinery, being dependent solely on human labor. Usually five people are required to harvest the tree's bark, using a small axe. The process requires training due to the skill required to harvest bark without harming the tree.  The men spend two years at college studying their subject before they are so much as allowed near a tree with one of the array of special cork knives. Outside the two-month harvesting period, the men all have different jobs in the processing factories for the rest of the year.

After their two years' training, the men join the gangs who roam the oak forests and each has a specific role in the (usually five-man) gang, from chief cutter to lowly carrier. The cutters' experience tells them how far to cut up the tree to avoid harming it. They travel around the forest in a nine-year cycle, allowing the trees they cut time to regenerate the cork (which is, in fact, a type of parasite on the bark of the tree beneath). Their burros, mules, roam free in the forest for the rest of the year, never straying too far from a free meal, but for the two month harvest they trek back and forth between harvest site and cork factory. So expert is their knowledge of the routes that, once loaded, a tap on the back will send them off unaccompanied to the factory. The town of Cortes de la Frontera actually holds burro-loading contests at its annual summer feria, with a prize for the most ingenious loading of a burro.

At the factory, the cork is boiled in a vast, deep (maybe 15 feet) pool of water, which renders it malleable for flattening and then processing by machine.  The cork then goes through several levels of compression, depending on its destination. It emerges as very thin sheets of varying sizes, perhaps thinner than a child's little finger. It is then checked for quality - the oak trade has five levels, from excellent to poor - and the oak is assigned to a use; insulation, say.

Most interestingly, however, is how it does reach the bottles we uncork. Bottle corks are stamped out by machines, at different widths for wine, champagne and cognac (Spanish cork is treasured by the French brandy producers). When they pile up in the dumpers beneath the pressing machines, they look like big wooden pennies.

These are graded by quality, and then carefully fed into further compressing machines. Cork makers reckon that it would be a waste of good cork to use it throughout a wine or champagne cork, so lower quality cork is placed in the middle, highest quality at either end, where the cork meets both wine and outside air. These layers are then compressed so tightly we do not even notice that a cork we pull is not one single unit but a compression of up to eight layers crushed together. The finished corks are then dispatched to bottling plants across Europe and beyond.

So, the next time you have a wine cork separate on you, you can blame it on the cork that was not compressed properly, or was made of poorer quality cork.

These two trees show at least 3 different harvestings, so that would put them at over 50 years old.