Cork's first recorded use as a stopper — and its most common use today — was by the Egyptians thousands of years ago.

Ancient Greeks also used cork oak bark to make fishing buoys, sandals and stoppers for vessels for wine and olive oil.

The Romans found many uses for cork, including the construction of house roofs and beehives, in ship construction and for women's shoes.

In the 1600s, a French monk called Dom Pérignon, took a giant step towards the modern, most widespread use of cork — as a wine closure.

Containers holding sparkling wine traditionally had been plugged by wooden stoppers wrapped in olive oil-soaked hemp. Dom Pérignon observed that these stoppers often popped out. He successfully swapped the conical plugs for cork stoppers and cork soon became essential for wine bottling.

Fuelled by a rapidly growing wine industry, demand for cork increased, sending ripples into Catalonia in Spain. The world's first cork stopper factory opened in around 1750, in Anguine (Spain) marking the beginning of the industrial application of cork.

Cork stoppers arrived in Portugal around 1700. Some 70 years later they were used in cylindrical bottles in Oporto, allowing the wine to mature slowly in a glass receptacle for the first time.

The spread of mass-produced glass bottles with a uniform neck and opening helped to advance the acceptance of cork stoppers, not just for wine but a wide range of liquids.

Production boomed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Between 1890 and 1917, the industry's workforce more than doubled and by 1930 it had increased fivefold, to a total of 10,000 workers. By this time Portugal had become the world's leading cork producer, a position it holds to this day.

NATURAL CHOICE | FROM BARK TO BOTTLE | RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT | HOME