Tastes great or less filling. Sport or trad. The obvious and time-honored debates in life continue. Since the resurgence of wool as a backcountry-worthy textile, add the poly-versus-merino battle to your list of inflammatory topics to discuss at your next dinner party.
But before you let folks go home insulted, undecided, or perhaps with an illusory sense of victory, consider the Rab merino-poly-Cocona (“MeCo”) base layer–it’s a solid compromise between the two, if not an outright solution to the question.
Rab fashions its MeCo material with 65 percent New Zealand merino wool and 35 percent Cocona-treated polyester. I became a Cocona fan while writing catalogs for Sierra Designs. They were one of the first companies to use it and I scored a few pieces in 2008. Some savvy textile wizard figured out that by taking residual carbon from charred coconut shells (leftover from the coconut oil industry) and treating polyester fibers with it, the resulting fabric had faster drying times, much greater odor-resistance, and increased UV protection. Not bad for a material that would normally end up in the landfill. Poly-Cocona garments (and sleeping bag liners) proved to be way less funky after days of use and they say drying times were improved, though they didn’t seem vastly better to me.
So Rab now makes 65/35 merino-Cocona baselayers in a variety of weights. I scored a midweight zip-turtleneck (8 oz; $90) and a much-lighter T (4 oz.; $60) for testing last spring. I toured one long day on the Dana Plateau in the midweight piece, so I don’t have much to say on it yet. The T, on the other hand, I have beaten down thoroughly and it’s one of the most versatile pieces I have.
I’ll refer to the polyester in the garment simply as Cocona from here on out–but recognize that Cocona is polyester treated with carbon, so it carries the performance benefits of poly (quick-wicking, fast-drying, durability) and the improvements (odor-resistance, higher UPF, faster-drying) of carbon. Onward.
Cocona does a lot to improve poly, but one thing it does not is hand or feel. The Rab T feels like a blend, rather than a pure-wool shirt. Call it a 20 percent compromise in comfort. Truth is I like the way my 100-percent-merino baselayers feel a bit more, but the lighter weight of the Rab means it’s more comfortable in hotter weather.
