The History of Cork

Cork was first recorded as a stopper thousands of years ago by the Egyptians.

Ancient Greeks also used cork oak bark to make fishing buoys, sandals and stoppers for vessels for wine and olive oil.

In the 1600’s, a French monk called Dom Perignon was instrumental in promoting the most widespread use of cork - as a wine closure.

Containers of sparkling wine had traditionally been plugged by wooden stoppers wrapped in hemp soaked in olive oil. Dom Perignon had observed that these stoppers often popped out. He successfully swapped the conical plugs for cork stoppers and cork soon became essential for wine bottling.

A fast growing wine industry, increased the demand for cork. The world's first cork stopper factory opened in around 1750, in Anguine (Spain). This marked the beginning of the industrial application of cork.

Cork stoppers arrived in Portugal around 1700. Some 70 years later they were used in cylindrical bottles in Oporto, allowing the wine to mature slowly in a glass receptacle for the first time.

Mass-produced glass bottles with a uniform neck and opening helped to advance the acceptance of cork stoppers, not just for wine but a wide range of liquids.

Currently, Portugal is the world's leading cork producer.

Interesting Properties

The natural wine cork is unsurpassed as a wine closure. Among its many valued properties are its lightness, impermeability to liquids and gases, resistance to wear, rot and temperature extremes and, perhaps above all, its renowned compressibility.

The secret to its performance is its unique cell structure, which technology cannot replicate. Cork consists of a honeycomb of tiny impermeable cells made from suberin, a complex fatty acid, and filled with an air-like gas. There are on average about 40 million cells per cubic centimetre of cork or around 800 million cells in a single wine cork.

Cork's cell-like structure makes it easy to compress and so less liable to damage from corking machines. Amazingly, the cork is capable of being compressed to about half its width without losing any flexibility and it is the only solid that can be compressed in one dimension without increasing in another dimension.

The cushion-like cork cells also display what is known as elastic memory. When compressed they constantly try to return to their original size, thus maintaining a tight seal. This means the cork exerts a very even pressure against the surface of the bottle neck and can compensate for imperfections in the bottle.

Being elastic, cork is also more tolerant than other materials of changes to temperature and pressure.