First of all, natural cork is grown in the Mediterranean region of Europe, especially in Spain and Portugal. It is harvested from the bark of oak trees, once every seven to nine years. With this limited harvesting season, and with the increase in bottled wines being produced in the world, it is easy to see by the law of supply and demand, the price of cork will rise, especially for countries that must import cork, such as New Zealand and Australia.

Some of the advantages of using a plastic cork or a synthetic cork are:

1. The main driving force for using synthetic stoppers rather than the normal stoppers, is the cheaper price. This goes back to that first rule you learn in business class. It is called the law of supply and demand. As supply goes down and demand goes up, price will rise.

2. Plastic stopper does not give your wine cork taint. Cork taint comes from the normally used cork and will spoil the wine.

3. Synthetic stoppers are easier to remove from the wine bottle. They do not fall apart like the natural stoppers sometime does.

These are some of the benefits of using plastic cork to seal wine bottles over the normally used cork.

Of course there are some arguments for continuing to use natural cork. One such argument is that natural cork is more environmentally friendly than plastic cork. The other argument that wine lovers use for retaining the natural cork, is that the synthetic corks cheapens the wine.