Of The Origins of the Cork!

A Crazy Little Bird Told Me
3 days ago
5 min read

Well, I did warn you, didn’t I? This whole Bouchon Lyonnais article naturally led to the “I wonder how the bottle cork came to be?” question. Surely, I can’t be the only one wondering about such things!

I will start by saying that the information on the origin of the corks varies somewhat between sources. Some mention it as early as the 3rd century BC, used by Greeks and Romans, some make its history starts in the 1500s-1700s. I am going to present all the information I found, and you can decide for yourself.

Let’s maybe start with: what is a cork?

This can be defined as being a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container, such as a bottle, tube, or barrel. Other names for it are stopper or bung.

What is a cork made of?

Well, this aim here is to talk about the “cork-cork”, if you know what I mean, so for that purpose, natural wine corks come from the bark of the cork oak tree, an evergreen, also known at Quercus suber, found around the Mediterranean basin.

When the tree reaches 25 years old, the bark is carefully harvested every 9 years by peeling it away and cutting it into sheets before processing. The oak trees are not cut down, and only about half of its bark is removed at any time. After the third harvest, the bark is of sufficient quality for producing wine corks.

Now, some fun facts about cork:

It is harvested in a sustainable way, making it a renewable material
Its production helps to preserve the biodiversity of the Mediterranean region
It is 100% biodegradable
It is 100% recyclable
It is a very resistant material, ideal for use in products that require strength and durability (including the core of cricket balls!)
It is a material resistant to water, fire and bacteria, slow to deteriorate and can be used as a waterproof seal
It has insulating properties, making it energy efficient in buildings and insulation products

This all seems so simple, right? Well, it isn’t quite so, you see. There are corks, and there are corks! To be exact there are:

Natural cork stoppers made from a single piece of bark
Colmated corks made from a single piece of bark containing pores filled with glue and cork dust
Multi-piece corks made of two or more pieces glued together
Agglomerated corks made of cork dust and glue
Technical corks made of agglomerated corks with single pieces of cork on either end.

All of this is nice and all, but when did this all start, and why?

There is no consensus as to when the first cork was used as a wine bottle stopper, but corks have been found in Roman shipwrecks dating from the fifth century BC. These corks differed a great deal from the corks of today, as they were used with a sealant made of resin, often pine tar it seems, whilst today they are punched plugs which form a tight seal.

The need to find a method to plug containers and allowing transport and/or storage for long period of times or distances started it all.

Wine, beer and honey were produced in China as early as 9,000 years ago, and pottery was developed starting at around 6,000 BC, making it possible to store and trade goods, liquid goods! As technology and knowledge evolved, winemakers soon learned that having wine + air tended to leave you with vinegar, and I am not convinced that pickled eggs or lemons was all the rage at that time, certainly not when one wanted an alcoholic libation. So, one needed to find a way to make those containers air-tight, and fast!

Just in case you had any doubt, yes, I now want to understand the origin of winemaking, and how did they make the link between wine going bad and air!

Before the invention of the cork as we know it today, various methods were used to make the containers air-tight, such as sealing amphoras with a glob of wet clay, leaves and reeds packed tight with clay applied on top, wood or leather plugs with a layer of olive oil, straw, wad of leaves, cork (of course!) with resin and so on.

Gradually, wooden barrels, credited to the Celts, replaced the terracotta jars and amphorae, with the Romans started adopting barrels for wine storage and transportation around 1st Century BC. The transition to storing and transporting wine only in wooden barrels was virtually complete by the 3rd Century AC, ending amphorae’s 5,500-year period of dominance.

After the fall of the Roman empire, global trade vastly decreased, making the need for corks somewhat irrelevant, until it re-emerged slowly, being first imported to England in the 1300s, starting to be used as a stopper for wine in the 1500s, and finally becoming a standard as wine stopper by the 1600s.

Things changed drastically in 1632, when Kenelm Digby introduced a bottle-making technology that was able to produce strong and inexpensive glass containers, slowly replacing the traditional wine barrels as method of transportation and storage.

In the 18th century bottle design changed, going from pear-shaped bottle to the shape we know today, allowing for the corks to keep moist during storage. And, as they say, the rest is history!

The growing demand for cork stoppers led to the development of the cork industry in Portugal, making it the largest in the world, followed by Spain, Italy, and Algeria.

Now, for a last rabbit hole, what is a cork without a corkscrew… right?

Well, it appears that at first, there was no way to remove the cork from the bottleneck, and those were left stuck and sticking out. I can’t quite picture that but imagine the frustration!

Anyhow, the corkscrew was first described in the Treatise on Cider by John Worlidge in 1676, even though it seemed to have been called a “steel worm” (because it was a variation of the “gun worm”, a musket barrel cleaning tool manufactured by gun-smiths) and the first corkscrew patent was granted to the Reverend Samuel Henshall, in England in 1795.

And, last but not least, a person who collects corkscrews is a helixophile and a person who collects champagne capsule is a placomusophile. There is no name for a cork collector, which I find mildly annoying!

To summarise it all: food and beverage were discovered and needed to be stored, then transported (you sell it you make money!) and be kept air-tight as much as possible to preserve them, first in amphoras, then in barrels and finally in glass bottles (I mean one doesn't exclude the others of course, but you follow my drift!). To close all those containers, they started stuffing stuff in the openings and I suppose hoping for the best. As technology evolved we got back to the cork and found a better way to keep it moist and acting like a full seal... and Bob's your uncle! It only took a few thousands years of hit and miss and dark ages to get there !

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