Interesting facts about wine corks

Cork, also known as liège, is made from oak bark and has proven to be the best wine preserver in the world.

Not all wine bottles in the world use corks, but they always make up the highest percentage. There are also many interesting stories surrounding the production of these types of corks. Try to test yourself through the following to see if you are a wine connoisseur.

Corks are made from oak bark. Corks, though small, can resist the aging process of wine, making today's wines taste better.

Before the invention of glass bottles, a cork-like material was used for fishing tackle in China and Egypt. By 400 BC, it was found in Italy and used in buoys, shoes, and roofing materials.

As early as the 1st century BC, a wine bottle was found in Ephesus, an ancient Greek city, sealed with a cork made from oak bark. However, cork was not the only choice. As late as the 17th century, French winemakers were still using special materials made from cloth to make wine stoppers.

Later, cork was used thanks to many different outstanding properties, mainly being light, waterproof, difficult to rot, highly compressible and elastic...

However, cork also has some limitations, especially in the preservation stage because of very strict requirements. For example, it is necessary to keep the humidity good so that the cork does not dry out, making it difficult to open, as well as not letting air get inside, reducing the quality.

Oak bark is very "durable" so they usually survive forest fires easily. They also grow quite quickly.

There are currently about 2.4 million hectares of oak plantations in the world. More than half of the oak forests harvested for wine cork production come from Portugal. Thanks to the conditions of rainfall, wind and soil fertility, oak forests here are quite developed. Other countries such as the United States have also tried to cultivate this tree but with little success. Therefore, the Mediterranean region is still considered the most important land of this tree.

Cork is a sustainable and 100% renewable material when handled properly. Once the oak tree reaches maturity (25-30 years old), the wood can be harvested every 9 years. The first one or two harvests will almost certainly yield unsatisfactory quality bark, but the oak tree can be harvested until it reaches around 200 years of age. The oak tree can grow to be 6 m tall and around 40 cm in diameter. As it ages, new trees are planted to replace it.

During harvesting, small gaps are created in the trunk, which gradually allow the bark to separate easily without causing any lasting damage. The separation is only done between early May and late August.

Cork corks, though small, can resist the aging process of wine, making today's wines more delicious and it has become associated with wine drinking culture.

According to VNE