Once the bottle stoppers have been punched out of the cork
slabs, there is some leftover cork scrap. This scrap is ground up, molded into
large blocks and baked in ovens to make other cork products, such as cork tile
flooring and cork message boards.
Cork has been used as bottle stoppers for more than 400
years. It is possibly the best suited material to use as a bottle stopper
because it contains a natural waxy substance, called suberin. This
substance makes cork impermeable to liquids and gas, and prevents the cork from
rotting.
As late as the mid-17th
century, French vintners did not use cork stoppers, using
oil-soaked rags stuffed into the necks of bottles instead?
Wine corks can be
made of either a single piece of cork, or composed of particles, as in
champagne corks; corks made of granular particles are called "agglomerated
corks".
Natural cork closures are
used for about 80% of the 20 billion bottles of wine produced each year. After a decline in
use as wine-stoppers due to the increase in the use of cheaper synthetic
alternatives, cork wine-stoppers are making a comeback and currently represent
approximately 60% of wine-stoppers today.
High-speed flash image of a champagne bottle
being uncorked
Because of the
cellular structure of cork, it is easily compressed upon insertion into a
bottle and will expand to form a tight seal. The interior diameter of the neck
of glass bottles tends to be inconsistent, making this ability to seal through
variable contraction and expansion an important attribute. However, unavoidable
natural flaws, channels, and cracks in the bark make the cork itself highly
inconsistent. In a 2005 closure study, 45% of corks showed gas leakage during
pressure testing both from the sides of the cork as well as through the cork
body itself.
Since the mid-1990s,
a number of wine brands have switched to alternative wine closures such as synthetic plastic stoppers, screw caps,
or other closures. In some countries, screw caps are often seen as a cheap
alternative destined only for the low grade wines; however, in Australia, for
example, much of the non-sparkling wine production now uses these caps as a
cork alternative, although some have recently switched back to cork citing
issues using screw caps. These alternatives to real cork have both advantageous
and controversial properties. For example, while screw tops are generally
considered to offer a trichloroanisole (TCA) free seal, it is possible to
find TCA contamination in a screw cap bottle. Additionally,
they reduce the oxygen transfer rate to almost zero, which can lead to
reductive qualities in the wine. TCA is one of the primary causes of cork taint in wine. However, in recent years
major cork producers (Amorim, Álvaro Coelho & Irmãos, Ganau, Cork Supply
Group, and Oeneo) have developed methods that remove most TCA from natural wine
corks. Natural cork stoppers are important because they allow oxygen to
interact with wine for proper aging, and are best suited for wines purchased with
the intent to age. Stoppers which
resemble natural cork very closely can be made by isolating the suberin
component of the cork from the undesirable lignin,
mixing it with the same substance used for contact lenses and an adhesive, and
molding it into a standardized product, free of TCA or other undesirable
substances.
The study
"Analysis of the life cycle of Cork, Aluminum and Plastic Wine
Closures," commissioned by cork manufacturer Amorim and made public in December 2008,
concluded that cork is the most environmentally responsible stopper, in a
one-year life cycle analysis comparison with plastic stoppers and
aluminum screw caps.