The "Breathing Corks" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Trying out my new corkscrew on a bottle of wine I've had around the house for a few years.  Carol and I keep all our wine on a shelf above the refrigerator and I need a chair to reach the bottles on the back of the shelf and from time to time I just seem to miss a bottle or two.  The bottle I found to open today was one such bottle that someone gave to us many years ago so we thought we better open it and give it a try.  As I was turning the screw into the cork it make me think where these corks were made.  At one time the majority of corks made in the United States were made by a small cork-cutting company in Pittsburgh that was owned by 24-year-old Thomas Armstrong.  He invested $300 of his savings and bought the company in 1860.  

Thomas Armstrong

The company was originally known as Armstrong & Glass, but Thomas' brother purchased Mr. Glass' share and the company was renamed Armstrong, Brother & Company.  The pair carved the cork stoppers by hand, mostly to fit glass containers and delivered their product in a wheelbarrow.  The brothers branded each cork with a distinctive Circle-A logo.  Cork is the bark of the cork oak tree, ot Quercus Suber, which is found in southwestern Europe and northwestern Africa therefore all their materials had to be imported. The trees need to be at least 25 years old before the material used to create the cork could be harvested.  The cork tree can only be harvested one every 9 years.   Eventually the corks were made by machine and by 1891 Armstrong Cork, as it was now called, was the largest cork supplier in the world.  Eventually, in 1916, they moved part of the company to Lancaster where they began to diversify, making linoleum.  The cork stoppers that are made today and used for wine bottles used to be nothing more than refuse after being removed from the wine bottle.  Today they have found a re-use as decoration.  

A variety of corks used as stoppers.

Corks have been used to seal vessels for thousands of years.  Before cork there was cloth or leather to seal bottles and later clay and sealing wax was used.  Another closure material that was used in the 1500s was glass.  Bottles were hand blown and a glass stopper was created for each bottle made.  As glass bottles became more popular, cork started to be used as a stopper rather than glass.  The cork allowed the wine to age in the bottle since it severely retarded the oxidation process, thus allowing the wine to age and evolve slowly over time.  Cork allows this because they allow minimal amounts of oxygen into the wine.  The best corks allow close to 1 mg of oxygen to enter the bottle each year.  Just the right amount or air to remove the sulfites that were aded in the bottling process to keep the wine fresh and to avoid the harmful effects of oxidation.   Today synthetic corks are being tested by some wine manufacturers.  They are made to look like a real cork, but they don't create a perfect seal.  Thus, more unwanted air enters the bottle of wine causing it to oxidize.  So, it seems that the true cork still has a place in wine making today as it did back when Armstrong first started to manufacture them.  Today, what at one time was Lancaster Cork Works, owned by Armstrong, is now a hotel.  So where are all these corks now made.  I haven't been able to determine that, but my guess is that they are now manufactured in countries other than the United States.  Aren't many items?  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.