ISM Music

• Personalized Wine Glasses
• Customized Champagne Flutes
• Etched Wine Glasses
• Wine Accessories
• Custom Etched Wine Glasses
• Fun Wine Glasses
• Custom Wine Glasses
• Wine Gifts
• Engraved Wine Glasses
• Personalized Wine Glass

Cork has been harvested and used in many applications for over two hundred years. Cork comes from the inner bark of the cork oak tree, grown mainly in Portugal, Spain, and Morocco.

Cork harvesting does not permanently damage the cork oak tree. Its bark and cork layers regrow over time. Cork cannot be harvested for the first time until the tree is at least 25 years old and then can only be re-harvested every 10-15 years after that.

The cork layer is stripped from the tree in long swaths and then boiled to remove it from the tough outer bark and make it softer and easier to work with. The main use of cork is for use as stoppers in wine bottles. Cork is the perfect material for the job as wine needs to “breathe” as it ages, meaning that a very slow, controlled entry of air into the bottles over time breaks down the tannins in the wine to produce a more mellow, rich flavor with complex overtones. Wines that especially benefit from cork aging over years (or even decades) include Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Bordeaux.

Wine stoppers are punched out of the cork slabs in different lengths depending on the intended use. Longer corks are used for longer-aged, more robust wines and shorter corks are used for wines that are meant to be enjoyed in the near term. The rest of the cork scrap is ground up, fired in ovens and used in other cork products such as floors and message boards.

Cork’s use as wine stoppers have increased the demand for cork to the point where existing cork oak trees cannot support the industry any longer. Because of the long time between planting and harvest, the renewal of the trees cannot keep up with the rate of harvest. This has led to a massive increase in the cost of cork wine stoppers. Wineries have met this challenge by only using real cork stoppers in their best premium storage wines. Everyday wines often have corks made from chipped cork that has been glued and compressed into the traditional cork shape. There are also rubberized synthetic corks on the market for short term wines. The downside of compressed corks is that they off-gas some of the glue fumes and can produce off-flavors in the wine over time. The downside of rubberized corks is that they do not allow the wine to breathe and therefore should only be used for wines that are to be enjoyed within six months or less.

Cork has been a valuable commodity in the Mediterranean for two centuries and will continue to be so in the future. It has unique properties for storage of wines, vinegars, and oils. If managed properly, cork oak trees can provide a sustainable and renewable source of stoppers for centuries to come.