It’s Fun to Pop A Cork in Azaruja Portugal!

You’ll never open another bottle of wine or champagne again without thinking of this.

Cork is one of Portugal’s biggest and most important exports. In fact, Portugal is the biggest cork producer in the world and produces more than 50% of the world’s cork supply. The vast majority of this is made into those forgettable or collectable wine bottle stoppers but increasingly, more and more cork is being sold to the construction and fashion industries and even to the space industry. More on this in a minute.

Cork is so big that Portugal’s richest family, Amorim, has it’s multi billion dollar fortune to thank for it’s cork investments.

Who knew?

Great for storing wine, yes, but cork is also used for sound and heat insulation, handbags, purses, wallets, yoga mats ( I practice on a cork mat from Yoloha, relinquishing my beloved 20 year rubber companion to this more attractive and superior mat) , iPad covers ( I bought several at the factory) shoes, and even furniture.

Harvesting Cork

The process of harvesting the cork oak takes precision, years of practice, and a good axe. In the Alentejo region of Portugal, workers spend their summers delicately removing the outer layers of the trees by hand before sending them to be processed into something more recognizable. During a harvest, the outer bark of a cork oak trunk and major branches are carefully stripped by hand – no mechanical stripping devices are allowed.  Read that again.

Experienced cork strippers use a specialized cork axe to split the outer bark and peel it away from the tree.

Yikes, how time-consuming is it to supply the world’s wine industry?

How many times can you harvest cork?

A single cork oak tree can be safely harvested up to seventeen times, at intervals of at least nine years and only once the tree has reached twenty-five years of age. This means that the harvesting of each cork tree can continue for at least 150 years.

The cork industry has become endangered because of this, not actual cork trees. About 70% of all cork harvested has traditionally been harvested for wine cork production, so if the demand dries up, it affects the whole system negatively. Cork forests run the risk of being abandoned or converted.

The first instances of cork usage go way back in time. In 3000 BC, for example, Egypt, Babylon and Persia were already using cork in fishing tackle. Every now and then, throughout history, new uses for cork have been invented including several kinds of military equipment in World War II. 

However, it wasn’t until around 1700 that cork stoppers started being used in Portugal and this usage grew with the expansion of the port wine trade some 70 years later. 

Simão Fortio started harvesting cork when he was 15 years old. At 45, he has been harvesting cork for over 30 years. He explained that he and other workers harvest the cork during the summer with axes. Oftentimes, men work in pairs to help each other, “very carefully not to harm the tree.”

“It’s very difficult. It takes a lot of knowledge to remove the cork without hurting the tree,” Fortio said.

Portugal is the world leader not only in cork extraction, harvesting 100,000 tons of it a year, but also in selling cork products.

“2018 was an historical year for the cork industry,” said João Rui Ferreira, President of the Portuguese Cork Association. For the first time, Portugal exported more than 1 billion euros worth of cork, he added.

Wine stoppers make up the majority of the market, representing 70% of total exports.

“Knowing that 40 million cork stoppers are produced daily in Portugal, it’s very likely that when you’re opening a wine bottle, the cork stopper is coming from Portugal,” Ferreira said.

To discover more information about the natural cork harvest, read this article via Business Insider.

And you’ll never just, “pop a cork” the same way again.