SeeingGreen ™

For those of you’ve who aren’t living in a cave (although good for storing wine), our fair city is racked with opportunities to purchase a bottle of something red or white. Now, with the opening of “Cork,” a wine shop on the corner of Northeast 29th and Alberta, you can also choose a bottle of green. Offering a dizzying array of wines from all over the world and our own wine-rich backyards, Cork makes an effort to represent the best of sustainably grown wines.

After a receiving a detailed lesson from an informed Cork employee, “sustainable” in wine can mean different things. For some producers it’s all about being organic – using grapes not treated with synthetic chemicals. For others, sustainable means “bio-dynamic,” or treating the vineyard as a closed-loop ecosystem and using the moon’s cycles to dictate harvest schedules. Finally, some “sustainable” producers simply abide by historic farming practices inherent to successful vineyards from Bordeaux, France to Amity, Oregon. To help you navigate sustainable wine territory, third-party certifications, such as “organic, Salmon Safe or LIVE” offer some guidance. Easier still is Cork’s use of green tags to mark sustainably produced wines.

Fortunately, the green at Cork doesn’t just stop with the wine. Its storefront is also green; boasting salvaged wood tables and beams, a rescued claw foot tub filled with wine bottles, low VOC paints and not surprisingly, the use of rapidly renewable cork at its wine tasting bar. And even though I am a self-proclaimed beer drinker, this new wine outpost makes the Seeing Green in me want to raise a toast… to Cork.

Cork
2901 NE Alberta Street
503.281.cork
Open Tuesday - Saturday: 11-7
Sunday: 12-5