Welcome to Brain staff from dot com where smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question where does cork come from? Just about every tree has an outer layer of cork bark, but the cork oak is the primary source of most cork products in the world, including wine bottle stoppers. These trees growing countries that run along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where there's plenty of sunshine,
low rainfall, and high humidity. The countries that produced the most cork include Portugal, Algeria, Spain, Morocco, France, Italy and Tunisia. So why does the cork oak have a thicker layer of cork bark than other trees. The tree evolved to protect itself from the harsh conditions of the forest near the Mediterranean. These forests experience frequent droughts, brush fires, and
strong temperature or fluctuations. Cork is actually made of water resistant cells that separate the outer bark from the delicate inner bark. It has a unique set of properties not found in any other naturally existing material. It's lightweight, rot resistant, fire resistant, termite resistant, impermeable to gas and liquids, and it's soft and buoyant. It's these properties that make it ideal for wine bottles and tile flooring. Let's take a look at how cork gets stripped from the tree and
processed into consumer products. First, you have to strip the bark. The cork oak must be at least twenty five years old before it's bark can be first harvested. It's cork can then be stripped every eight to fourteen years after that, for as long as the tree lives. The cork is stripped off during June, July, and August using a long handled hatchet to cut sections out of the bark. These sections are then pried away from the tree. Workers have to be careful not to damage the inner layer of
the bar or otherwise the bark won't grow back. Next is washing the cork. The cork slabs that are cut away from the tree are boiled and the rough outer layer of bark is stripped away. Boiling the cork also softens it, making it easier to work with. Next is punching, in this case punching out the corks for wine bottles. From the slabs of cork, holes are punched out to make the stoppers. These bottle stoppers are then sorted and shipped to various destinations. The stoppers at this time can
be printed or branded with names or logos. And then there's the leftover scrap cork. Once you take the bottle stoppers out of a slab of cork, you have these leftover scraps and that could be ground up, molded into large blocks, and baked in ovens to make other cork products such as cork tile flooring and cork message boards. Cork has been used as bottle stoppers for more than four hundred years. It's possibly the best suited material to use as a will stopper because it contains a natural
waxy substance. This substance makes cork impermeable the liquids and gases and prevents the cork from rotting. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stup Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The houste Works I Fine app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.