We will be traveling to Portugal following a My Way Spain tour in September/October. There is a lot of positive feedback from RS tour members who seem to enjoy the cork farm tour. Can anyone provide details on cork farms that may be open to the public, perhaps near Lisbon without a group tour? Thank you!
Posted by
Cascais, Portugal
1824 posts
Amorim Coruche is a cork factory about an hour from Lisbon. They do tours of the groves when harvesting and the factory. I do not know if you can tour as an individual or need to be with a group. The company is easy to google.
Posted by
OP
6 posts
Thanks for the suggestion KathrynJ. I did a search using a variety of search engines and did not really come up with anything for Amorim Coruche showing that it was open to the public or for tours. Any other ideas? Thanks!
Posted by
Cascais, Portugal
1824 posts
I found a Viator cork farm visit out of Rodondo - in the Evora region. It would be more than an Hour from Lisbon but the Alentejo region of the country is lovely. It looks like the Amorim tour is for groups only. I'm organizing a tour for my woman's group here in the Lisbon area so thought it was generally open to the public.
If you are going to the Algarve, it looks like there might be tours in that area.
If you don't find a tour, don't miss visiting at least one of the nicer cork stores in Lisbon. Forms and Cork & Co. are two stores in Chiado with great cork items.
Posted by
Milwaukie, Oregon
1056 posts
I have reserved places in the Alentejo Cork farm tour near arbors. Cost is 54.60 including lunch, 38.22 without. Summer tours leave daily at 9 and 5. It's a 5 km guided walk.
Posted by
Monterey County, CA (formerly Verbania Italy-Lago Maggiore)
1641 posts
I'm in the wine industry and Amorim is one of our cork suppliers. I'm going to Portugal next month to visit the Amorim factories. I believe that harvest is over by Sept so visiting a cork farm would just be looking at a bunch of trees. But I'll find out if Amorim does any public tours at either the cork processing plant or cork mfg plant. Send me a PM and I can let you know what I find out when I return.
Since cork trees can be harvested only every 9 years, you will see numbers painted on all cork trees. That signifies the next harvest for that tree.
Posted by
2 posts
We're headed to Portugal in September. We will be coming from Seville, Spain and stop in Faro for a few days. From Faro to Lisbon and then to Porto where we'll spend 4 days. Would love to hear about 'off the beaten path' experiences...From cork to port tours.