Comments on: Do corks for bottles have a direction?

Question: Do corks for bottles have a direction?

Jackson — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:17:15 -0800

When wine bottle corks are cut from the cork bark, is the cork cut vertically or horizontally through the section of bark? In other words, is there 'grain' directionality in the cork bark that matters in terms of it's function as a wine bottle cork?

By: griphus

griphus — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:18:53 -0800

According to this it's vertically.

By: Yellow

Yellow — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:26:06 -0800

Ooh, did you see this post? How cork is made - An illustrated guide to the cork production process

By: Sunburnt

Sunburnt — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:51:32 -0800

Since cork is bark and appears to grow outward from the trunk, any possible grain would be parallel to the surface of the tree. But it doesn't appear to have grain.

By: jamjam

jamjam — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:11:24 -0800

Traditional wine corks and other cork stoppers aren't made from the cork that grows on the tree as it grows up from a sapling because that cork is like the cork of other trees (ridged and very uneven in depth, albeit thicker), and so useless for the purpose.

Wine corks are made from "reproduction cork" which grows on cork oaks when the original bark is stripped off.

Reproduction cork is a solid, uniformly thick layer under ideal conditions.

It's been a while since I had a bottle of wine which had a cork not composed partly of compressed fragments of cork, though.

By: MrMoonPie

MrMoonPie — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:34:06 -0800

I'd say horizontal, but maybe we're saying the same thing. There's a very clear picture in the linked article.

By: InsanePenguin

InsanePenguin — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:39:53 -0800

It's funny that you bring this up because it was just a post on Metafilter.

On preview, exactly what Yellow posted.