

How cork is made - shawndumas
http://www.wineanorak.com/corks/howcorkismade.htm

======
soci
My family owns a small forest of these trees so I have some verified
information about the cork trees.

We harvest the cork out of the trees every ten years but it's absolutely false
that the owners of these trees make lots of money like someone here has said
in another comment. We just get enough to keep the forest clean of
underbrushes. This is a real truth.

Moreover, because his area is very dry in summer we suffer fires that burn the
forests every decade or two. Fortunately the burnt cork still works as an
insulator, it's black on the outside and therefore can only be used as
insulators in buildings. Amazingly, because cork it's such a great insulator
burned cork trees survive the fires and develop very easily. You've mostly
lost the cork production though...

We had a great fire at the beginning of the past summer that could be even
smelt from Barcelona (180Km away from this forest). I have a couple of
interesting pictures of the cork trees and how they develop.

This is a picture taken right after the great fire: <http://goo.gl/3oM8O>

Three months later all trees are developing again, however cork needs to be
peeled. We actually lost three years of bark growth because the last harvest
was three years ago: <http://goo.gl/3ZBHl>

~~~
ljf
Not sure where he says that owners of the trees make lots of money? He states
that top quality corks can be worth a Euro, but he doesn't mention the amount
of money the cork growers make.

~~~
pepve
Your parent wrote "someone here has said in another comment". He meant the
comment by arturventura downthread.

------
Gravityloss
Cork is quite a superb material and can be used as the middle sandwich layer
with carbon fiber. It's also used in space launchers as heat and noise
insulator inside nose fairings. It also has ablative properties and resists
flame propagation. It's lighter than most other woods, though not as light as
Balsa.

So I think it's a bit of a shame that it's used for wine bottle corks and
usually thrown away after use!

~~~
aeturnum
Because cork is getting more expensive, there are spotty recycling efforts. My
impression is that it's still fairly limited.

~~~
7rurl
Recycling cork seems crazy. Why not just compost it?

~~~
miahi
Cork is valuable because it's fire and rot resistant, and also quite
impermeable. This makes it hard to compost.

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sergiotapia
I come to hacker news for the tech and programming articles, but this is just
too interesting! :)

Thank you for sharing!

~~~
sejje
I just come for the tech. I expected cork to be a new js framework.

I know it's a community decision, but there's communities for this already.

~~~
aw3c2
I am a bit sad seeing you downloaded so harshly just for stating your opinion.

For me a big part of the hacker mindset is wanting to understand how
anything(!) works. How the things we use every day function in the deepest
sense, how they are created, why they exist. This post explains everything
about Cork in great detail and I loved learning all that. I hope that HN will
always value posts like this highly.

~~~
sejje
Truthfully I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't really disagree with you, and I
truly believe "how it's made" (much in the same style) is the best show on TV.

I just come from an "on-topic" background, I guess.

------
arturventura
Unknown also to most of you Cork is such a lucrative buisness that cork
removing is one of the most lucrative jobs you can find in rural areas. During
the harvesting seasion, many removers can make money for the entire year in a
month or two. however the job is excruciating because of dust and weight.
Trees owners also make lots of money.

------
arturventura
Although off topic I have to share this. I actually came from coruche, that is
a small village in the middle of Portugal and is so cool to find an article in
hacker news about it! :D

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kahirsch
> The planks are boiled to soften them, and also to clean them.

Ah, so it's true about the cork soakers.

~~~
debacle
<http://snltranscripts.jt.org/03/03qcork.phtml>

For the uninformed.

~~~
ubernostrum
Older (by nearly 20 years) version of the same gag:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei2WhctlRHY>

------
fghh45sdfhr3
Screw tops are better. Tighter, less oxygen, easier to deal with, and they
don't ever rot. If you ever get a glass of wine that smells intensely rotten
it could be because the cork has started rotting.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Is there any reason the wine industry seems to stick to cork then, other than
just being an old fashioned industry?

~~~
dockd
I find there is a ritual in bringing out the cork screw and opening the
bottle. Think about how a waiter presents it in a restaurant. There's no
anticipation or show in having them come out, showing you the bottle, then
twisting the cap off.

In a similar note, we have a "rabbit" corkscrew. It's super efficient at
opening a bottle, but is not particularly satisfying. Have you ever asked
yourself, If only I could open this bottle faster? (Although it can be
convenient if you're cooking with wine.)

~~~
narag
There is a kind without the... screw, the spiral thing I mean. It's pointy and
just slightly curved in S. I've been unable to find an image for it in five
minutes.

I bet that, once you get used to it (after spoling a few hundreds of corks,
that's it) it's faster than the "rabbit" model.

I say that because I used to be faster with the simple, T-shaped screw, and
I've seen it used in restaurants by experienced waiters.

------
lotsofpulp
It's also surprisingly difficult to harvest the cork bark from trees:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztr-RP0XYd8>

~~~
aw3c2
Wonderful video, thanks. The hollow sound of the axe hitting the bark and the
breaking are fantastic. I have no idea why, but I love them.

~~~
asdfs
Another video: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqF3SGFigdY>

I absolutely love this one (especially around 3:30 onward) due to how
tremendously satisfying the sounds and visuals are.

~~~
RobotCaleb
You might be interested in this, then.

<http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson>

------
jackalope
_These corks will be really expensive: over a Euro each._

I'm surprised that with top-quality corks being so valuable, there isn't an
incentive to recycle the material. I also wonder if there is a collector's
market for vintage corks.

~~~
wukkuan
There's a cork recycling bin at the Green Life (owned by Whole Foods) in my
hometown. They don't mention what they use it for, as far as I can tell, but
I'd guess they sell it somewhere.

~~~
Aloisius
All Whole Foods markets have cork recycling run by Cork ReHarvest in North
America and someone else in the UK:
[http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/cork-
reharv...](http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/cork-reharvest)

------
jt2190
A few things to know:

    
    
      * The cork bark grows back every five to seven years.
      * The initial bark strippings aren't of a high-enough 
        quality for bottles. IIRC, it takes four or five harvests 
        to get to that point.

------
kokey
I've driven around the Los Alcornocales Natural Park in Spain, it's one of the
largest cork forests in the world. The road on the edge winds a lot and I had
to stop along the way from feeling queasy from all the bends which is unusual
for me. I've also driven around Southern Portugal and from time to time would
see a couple of trees with bark looking like a harvested cork tree. It must be
fairly intensive to use these. I've noticed most Spanish and Portuguese wine
bottles have real cork, I suspect most wineries have a specific supply of cork
in the area.

------
pav3l
I thought that the growing amount of twist-off's was due to cork tree going
extinct, but it appears that the production of corks doesn't harm the tree.
Any thoughts?

~~~
victoro
I thought I heard about there being a cork shortage as well, after googling
around it seems that this may be an urban myth. Even Cork conservation sites
say there is no cork shortage [1]. Looks like twist-offs/plastic corks etc.
may just be around because they are cheaper than natural corks at current
market prices. Would be interesting to see how the production and demand for
plastic vs. natural corks swings with the price of petroleum or other
chemicals necessary for plastics production.

[1] <http://www.corkforest.org/faq_cork_facts.php>

~~~
pav3l
Back when I waited tables, whenever a customer would doubt the quality of wine
because it's a twist-off, we were supposed to tell them that it's a "green
thing", and a lot of good wineries are getting away from the cork for
environmental reasons. Well, looks like it's just cutting costs with some
clever marketing.

------
jelder
Related documentary on how corks actually get inserted into wine bottles:

<http://www.hulu.com/watch/19187>

------
lewisflude
Amazing stuff! I've always wondered how corks are made.

~~~
ironchef
Not just corks...but cork flooring, etc. as well (which is amazing stuff to
put in your kitchen...warm, acoustically insulating, soft and bouncy). Lovely
stuff that.

~~~
debacle
Stains quite easily, though.

------
Cd00d
I was doing some travelling back in 2002 or so, and spent several weeks in
Naples. I was shocked at how inexpensive wine was, at around 2 euro per bottle
(at the time, the euro and the dollar were very close). Then I learned that
the cork cost about 1 euro to produce (supported by this article), which I
found even more shocking.

Why don't more old world wineries go to the twist top?

~~~
albuquerque
1 euro may be the selling price of a top cork stopper. The majority of them
cost less than that, they could reach prices as low as 2 or 3 cents! (but
these are the real bad ones :-) ). i'd say you could buy medium quality cork
stoppers for 20-30 cents each. Note, we're not talking of cost values but the
final market prices.

------
francov88
Really cool article - always loved that show "How It's Made" but I don't think
they covered this....

------
celalo
Sometimes I think of, how in the world, somebody come up with the idea of
harvesting bark of trees to cork them wine bottles.

I guess we are more or less poisoned day by day seeing yet another location-
based-social-video-sharing-mobile-analytics -app.

------
gnosis
Does anyone else find it depressing that humans are still used for these jobs?

~~~
phatbyte
The workers in the article seem quite happy, unlike the fox conn workers who
created (most probably) your smartphone.

~~~
gnosis
Of course they seem to be quite happy. This entire article was basically an
infomercial by the wine industry. Do you really expect them to post any photos
of obviously miserable workers?

~~~
novalis
I think the workers presented are rather candid, most you cannot even see
their expression, so there is no faked "infomercial" quality to this. I am
also aware that in any industry there will be people that are not happy for
many valid reasons.

I would not use the adjective "depressing" to qualify human labour that
respects the environment it is set in, helps populations keep living in
interior mediterranean areas, and to speak about the product; help make
something that has a wide field of application. In fact these zones benefit
from a lot of quality rural turism because of the loop feed that comes out of
grape, cork, rural area setting with life quality parameters that are
disappearing all around the world. These are strong people that shouldn't be
paternalized for their strong value system that preserves habitat and social
condition in a strong group pattern. But that is just my opinion based on the
contact I have with this sort of cultural setting. All of these things make
this specialized manual labour part of a culture that warrants preservation,
not arbitrary value imposition.

~~~
gnosis
I freely admit I'm making a value judgment here. But I am not imposing my
values on anyone. I'm just noting that _I_ find the thought of anyone spending
their whole life sorting or boiling corks depressing.

I'm willing to go out on a limb to imagine they could have more interesting
and more fulfilling jobs than that, and even that those jobs need not be
environmentally destructive -- they might be environmentally beneficial, even.
Is this such a stretch? Would that be so wrong?

Is it inconceivable that some of these people might not actually enjoy
spending all their work hours sorting or boiling cork? Just because they and
perhaps their ancestors have been doing this for a long time, does that mean
that they enjoy it or would not rather be doing something else with their
time?

Speaking of imposing values, perhaps these workers should actually be asked
about what they want to do and whether they want their lives and their
children's lives to be dedicated to sorting cork.

~~~
jlgreco
It is incredibly obvious you have never worked this sort of job before.

Prior to getting into university I worked fulltime at a green-bean processing
plant. Green-beans come in on a truck, straight from a harvester, and leave on
another truck cut and washed. Exposed to the elements (roof, but no walls) in
deafening noise, _standing_ in front of a conveyor belt for hours staring at
green beans trying to grab all the dead field animals, sticks, and stems
before they went into the cutting machine. The beans were soaking wet so my
hands were constantly freezing. On good days they threw me a rake and told me
to climb into the back of a tractor trailer. After a while that gave me RSI.

It was I suspect worse than cork sorting or soaking. Certainly comparable.

Did I enjoy this job? Hell no. Would I rather have been doing something else?
No shit. Would I, _even in retrospect_ , want myself forced out of that job at
that time? _Fuck no._ Would I ever think of going back there and suggesting
that all those other workers be replaced to improve their lives? You have got
to be fucking kidding me.

~~~
gnosis
You seem to be suffering from some sort of tunnel vision that lets you see
only two options here: the miserable status quo or everyone getting fired.

I am not advocating firing anyone. If someone enjoys sorting cork, or if they
are just too afraid to make a transition to more interesting and fulfilling
work, I'd have no problem with them staying on.

What I do advocate is actually asking these people if they want to stay on or
be trained to do more interesting and fulfilling work. For those who do choose
to do something else, I think it would be a good thing to make this option
available to them, especially when the same job could be done by machines.

~~~
jlgreco
_"If someone enjoys sorting cork, or if they are just too afraid to make a
transition to more interesting and fulfilling work"_

That you think life is so simple really highlights your privilege.

------
jclem
Couldn't help but read this in the "How Its Made" voice.

~~~
ChrisArchitect
couldn't help being reminded of old SNL skit about 'cork soaking' with janet
jackson.

------
phatbyte
In Portugal there's this a company that creates shoes using cork as well
<http://www.rutz.pt/>

------
camiller
Neat. As a tech geek that is also a home brewer/home winemaker I find it very
interesting. Thanks for sharing.

------
yalogin
Intersting. Wonder why they aren't made from compressed wood pulp. In fact I
assumed that is the case.

------
induscreep
Shouldn't this be on reddit? Is HN the new reddit?

------
smlacy
Why is this on HN? Flagging.

~~~
gnosis
_"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to
its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there
is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that
you did."_

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

------
cupcake_death
"Got buck naked bit*hes counting corks", (Was what I was expecting after the 1
Euro + images).

