Cork (material)

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Information about Cork (material)

For other uses, see Cork.

Corks

A cork stopper for a wine bottle

Champagne corks

Varnished cork tiles can be used for flooring, as a substitute for linoleum or tiles.

Simple cork

Cork material is a subset of generic cork tissue, harvested for commercial use primarily from the Cork Oak tree, Quercus suber, with Portugal producing 50% of cork worldwide.^[1] Cork consists mostly of suberin. Cork's elasticity combined with its near-impermeability makes it suitable as a material for bottle stoppers, especially for wine bottles. Cork stoppers represent about 60% of all cork based production. Cork's low density makes it a suitable material for fishing floats and buoys, as well as handles for fishing rods (as an alternative to neoprene). Cork is used in musical instruments, particularly woodwind instruments, where it is used to fasten together segments of the instrument, making the seams airtight. Sheets of cork, often the by-product of more lucrative stopper production, are used to make floor tiles and bulletin boards. Granules of cork can also be mixed into concrete. The composites made by mixing cork granules and cement have low thermal conductivity, low density and good energy absorption. Some of the property ranges of the composites are density (400–1500 kg/m³), compressive strength (1–26 MPa) and flexural strength (0.5–4.0 MPa).^[2]

The cork industry is generally regarded as environmentally friendly. The sustainability of production and the easy recycling of cork products and by-products are two of its most distinctive aspects. However, only one leading company, Oeneo Bouchage of France has conducted and released its complete carbon footprint study, the first in the industry.

Cork demand has increased due to more wine being sealed with cork rather than being sold in bulk. Since a tree's bark can only be harvested six to nine years hence, supply is highly inelastic. Top quality corks are expensive, and no matter what the cost, have the risk of containing TCA (Cork Taint) and are suseptable to random oxydation due to their mechanical variablility. Many cheaper brands have switched to lower quality cork, synthetic plastic stoppers, screwcaps, or other closures. Because synthetic stoppers do not dry out and shrink, wine bottles with synthetic corks do not have to be stored on their sides to prevent oxidizing However, plastic "cork" can create other wine problems, notably what is called scalping where flavors are actually absorbed into the plastic making the wine less flavorfull. Cork contamination with harmless but foul-smelling trichloroanisole (TCA) is one of the primary causes of cork taint in wine. For these reasons, hundreds of wineries around the world are now avoiding the risk of using conventional punched cork and have moved to the state of the art DIAM closure, the worlds only truly TCA free corks made by Oeneo.

As late as the mid 1600s, French vintners did not use cork stoppers, useing oil-soaked rags stuffed into the necks of bottles instead.^[3]

Cork has been used in rocket technology due to its fire resistance. Cork can be used as bricks for the outer walls of houses, as in Portugal's pavilion at Expo 2000.

The Cork Oak is unrelated to the "cork trees" (Phellodendron), which have corky bark but are not used for cork production.

Sources

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ Karade SR. 2003. An Investigation of Cork Cement Composites. PhD Thesis. BCUC. Brunel University, UK.
3. ^ Prlewe, J. Wine From Grape to Glass. New York: Abbeville Press, 1999, p. 110.

Cork may refer to:

Cork (material), used for bottle stoppers and noteboards
Cork, Ireland, including:
Cork (city)
Cork (surname)
Cork encoding
Another name for a stopper (plug)

Anatomy and physiology

Suberin is highly hydrophobic and its main function is to prevent water from penetrating the tissue.
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Elasticity is a branch of physics which studies the properties of elastic materials. A material is said to be elastic if it deforms under stress (e.g., external forces), but then returns to its original shape when the stress is removed.
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bottle is a small container with a neck that is narrower than the body and a "mouth." Bottles are often made of glass, plastic or aluminum, and typically used to store liquids. e.g.
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stopper is a truncated conical piece of rubber, cork, glass, or plastic used to close off a glass tube, piece of laboratory glassware, a wine bottle or barrel and other containers with orifices.
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wine bottle is a bottle used for holding wine, generally made of glass. Some wines are fermented in the bottle, others are bottled only after fermentation. They come in a large variety of sizes, several named for Biblical kings and other figures.
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In physics, density is mass m per unit volume V—how heavy something is compared to its size. A small, heavy object, such as a rock or a lump of lead, is denser than a lighter object of the same size or a larger object of the same weight, such as pieces of
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Fishing is the activity of hunting for fish by hooking, trapping, or gathering. By extension, the term fishing is applied to pursuing other aquatic animals such as various types of shellfish, squid, octopus, turtles, frogs, and some edible marine invertebrates.
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A float (sometimes also called a bobber) is a device used in angling, and it serves two purposes. It suspends the bait at a predetermined depth, and it serves as a bite indicator. Floats come in different sizes and shapes.
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A fishing rod or a fishing pole is a tool used to catch fish, usually in conjunction with the sport of angling. (Sustenance and commercial fishing usually involves nets).
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Neoprene is the DuPont Performance Elastomers trade name for a family of synthetic rubbers based on polychloroprene (polymer form of Chloroprene). Neoprene was invented by DuPont scientists after Dr. Elmer K. Bolton of DuPont laboratories attended a lecture by Fr.
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A woodwind instrument is an instrument in which sound is produced by blowing against an edge or by a vibrating with air a thin piece of wood known as a reed. Most of these instruments were originally made of wood, but some such as the saxophone and some flutes are now made of other
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Flooring is the general term for a permanent covering of a floor, or for the work of installing such a floor covering. Often used to mean parquetry (wood flooring), it can also refer to various other materials like carpet or linoleum.
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bulletin board (pinboard, pin board or notice board in British English) is a place where people can leave public messages, for example, to advertise things to buy or sell, announce events, or provide information.
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Concrete is a construction material that consists of cement (commonly Portland cement) as well as other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate (generally a coarse aggregate such as gravel limestone or granite, plus a fine aggregate such as sand or
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Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems, such as the planet's climatic system, systems of
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Recycling is the reprocessing of materials into new products. Recycling generally prevents the waste of potentially useful materials, reduces the consumption of raw materials and reduces energy usage, and hence greenhouse gas emissions, compared to virgin production.
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Wine is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermentation of grape juice.^[1] The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients.
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BARK (Binär Aritmetisk Relä-Kalkylator, Swedish for "Binary Arithmetic Relay Calculator") was completed in February 1950 at a cost of 400.000 Swedish kronor. BARK was a 32-bit machine and could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms.
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In economics, elasticity is the ratio of the proportional change in one variable with respect to proportional change in another variable. Price elasticity, for example, is the sensitivity of quantity demanded or supplied to changes in prices.
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Plastic is the general term for a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic polymerization products. They are composed of organic condensation or addition polymers and may contain other substances to improve performance or economics.
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A screwcap is a type of alternative wine closure that is gaining increasing support as an alternative to cork for sealing wine bottles. A screwcap is a metal cap that screws onto threads on the neck of a bottle.
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Redox (shorthand for reduction/oxidation reaction) describes all chemical reactions in which atoms have their oxidation number (oxidation state) changed.

This can be either a simple redox process such as the oxidation of carbon to yield carbon dioxide, or the
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Cork taint is a broad term referring to a set of undesirable smells or tastes found in a bottle of wine, especially spoilage that can only be detected after bottling, aging and opening.
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Motto
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"
Anthem
"La Marseillaise"

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