The rarefied world of wine enthusiasts is all so very civilized. Public spats simply are not done. Name-calling and hair-pulling are the sole province of beer drinkers (the swine). Well, until recently. These days, golden goblets and long-stemmed flutes alike are roiling with turbulence. The unseemly bickering centers on an unlikely lightning rod: the wine cork.

An odd group of wine enthusiasts, supermarket chains, the plastic industry, and the likes of Bill Gates have declared the death of cork. In opposition, a hodge-podge of pro-cork interests-ranging from wine purists to environmentalists to subsistence farmers to the government of Portugal-are rallying to cork's defense.

It all stems from an affliction, found in both the expensive varietals and the cheap table wines, called "cork taint." A "corked" wine, according to experts, tastes cardboardy, "cheesy," musty, or flat. But no one is really sure how or why some corks become tainted. The taint itself can be traced to a chemical called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), which gets into the cork somewhere along the production line, and then reacts with the wine. In any case, trace TCA is a common environmental pollutant not limited to cork, but that's where it's creating the biggest problems.

Some winemakers and wine experts say the only solution to the problem is to phase out natural cork, and replace it with synthetic bottle stoppers made of plastic or even screwcaps. The eccentric Bonny Doon boutique winery near Santa Cruz, CA now plugs every single one of its bottles with synthetic corks. Just last year a major Napa Valley winemaker, PlumpJack Vineyards sealed its entire 1997 vintage Cabernet Sauvignon ($135 a bottle) with metal screwtops. Dozens of wineries in Australia and New Zealand quickly followed suit.

The creeping acceptance of plastic corks, however, is more than a matter of wine quality; it may spell the end for several endangered species of animals, as well as an ancient way of life in Spain and Portugal, where most cork is grown.

Cork oak forests on the Iberian peninsula constitute some of the very last remaining habitat of the endangered Iberian lynx and Imperial eagle. Led by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the UK, the pro-cork environmental faction claims that if plastic corks gain much of a foothold in the market the price of natural cork will plummet and the cork oak forests will fall into disuse, and likely be replaced with less ecologically sound timber plantations, such as pine or eucalyptus, or by housing developments and theme parks.

Besides, say natural cork's defenders, cork taint is too poorly understood to be pinned on cork farmers. The plastic cork companies are simply trying to create a scandal where there is none. And it is no coincidence, they say, that the plastic industry in America is behind the push to replace cork. Almost all synthetic bottle stoppers are produced in the US, and the top gun in the multi-million-dollar industry is a Seattle-area private firm called Supremecorq, which is rumored to have Microsoft monopolist Bill Gates as its star investor.

On the other side, plastic cork enthusiasts say this is all a disinformation campaign by greedy cork farmers who brought the problem upon themselves. They say the declining quality of natural cork is due to overstripping of trees and indiscriminate use of pesticides and disinfectants by cork farmers and cork manufacturers.

But the plastic cork makers also may have gotten too cocky with their victory: When customers at UK grocers complained about the plastic corks they were finding in their bottles of Bordeaux, they received form letters in response chock-a-block with falsehoods about corks and cork taint. A spokesman for Safeway told one complaining customer that the chain had switched because Portuguese cork farmers were "greedy," overstripping trees hazing wild pigs in the cork forests, and generally raping the landscape. He added that plastic corks would actually help save the world's cork forests.

Opponents say this is a disinformation campaign orchestrated by US multinationals who have taken UK grocers for a ride. Cork forestry expert Dr. Luis Palma, for example, says it is physically impossible to overstrip a cork oak. "The regular stripping of cork oaks improves the vigor of the trees," he told the Lisbon Observer. "The bark will not come off if it is not ready, so it is impossible to strip too often."

In addition, some wine experts say the "cork taint" issue as whole is a red herring, and that many wines identified as "corked" are in fact suffering from oxidation, storage problems, bacterial or fungal infections in aging barrels, or other factors unrelated to TCA. Sometimes, a bad bottle of wine is just a bad bottle of wine.

And plastic stoppers and screwcaps can, according to who you ask, also create their own problems. Detractors say plastic stoppers can impart a plasticky flavor to wine, or that they do not let wine breathe enough to age properly, or conversely, that they let wines breath too much, and cause a kind of spoilage called oxidation. Most plastic corks are also non-biodegradable and non-recyclable.

And of course there is the "experience" argument; the prospect of opening a nice bottle of pinot noir by twisting off a cap makes more than a few wine snobs quiver. Even for casual wine drinkers, something feels wrong when you open a wine bottle and don't get the satisfying "thok" as the stopper comes out and when you can't smell that cork.