Of wine and crepuscular things

It's not very often that I get to combine two of my passions. Wine has long been an interest of mine, right from the time I left university (my first 'proper' job was with Oddbins). Some might say that meeting my wife at a wine tasting was taking things a little to the extreme, but at least we started out knowing that we had something in common.

Owls, on the other hand, are a much more recent thing. Not to the extent of travelling around and seeing how many different species I can see, but just in the sense of an interested and slightly educated observer. If you want to head on down to the Hawk Conservancy in Andover, you will find a number of owls sponsored by very generous wedding guests of ours.

The two don't cross over very often, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had accidentally picked up a bottle of wine which did just that. Altano, from the Douro region of Portugal, is a fairly light red wine, made by a famous port producing family. You can read more about it here, although nowhere does the site explain just why the bottle comes covered in Scops owls. There are two owls on the label, one on the cap and one on the cork, and those are just the ones I have found.

It's the cork that is important. You see, it is a real cork. Made of cork oak. Not a plastic one, or a screw top. A real, genuine, owl-friendly, cork. Which is great, because one of the biggest threats to owl habitat is the current fashion for Portuguese and Spanish winemakers to use anything other than real cork to seal their bottles with. Owls in these countries tend to nest in cork oaks, and if no-one wants the cork, the oaks don't get planted. So the next time you need a bottle of red, get yourself some Altano and do an owl a favour.