HOW WINE CORKS ARE MADE ?

how wine corks are made ? 

Cork oaks are harvested every nine years, once they reach maturity. It doesn't harm the tree, and the cork bark regrows. Most cork forests are in Portugal and Spain.

The year of harvest is marked on the trunk, so each tree isn't harvested at the wrong time. Cork is a great insulating material, and gives these oaks a chance to survive the forest fires that occasionally happen in the hot Mediterranean summers.

The harvested cork planks are stored before processing. Good cork companies will store them on concrete rather than bare earth, lowering the risk of contamination.

This is a close-up of a piece of bark. It's quite thin, and won't be used to produce high-quality natural cork. But now there are also technical corks, made up of small pieces of cork fused together, which means that more of the cork bark is suitable for producing wine bottle closures. 

now these barks are soaked in boiling water to make it more soften , Now, to avoid cross-contamination, the water is cleaned, filtered and replenished regularly, with volatile s and water using removed on a continuous basis.

this is a look of a nice bark . and these barks are mostly used to make technical corks 

now these barks are grated , cutted and sended to the work tables 

It is a skilled process: make the wrong decisions and the corks aren't good enough, or cork is wasted.

What remains after the corks have been punched. This remaining cork can be ground up to make granules that can then be glued together to make agglomerate cork.

The corks are optically sorted: blasts of air are used to send the corks into the right grade bins.

                                                Then the corks are sorted by eye. 

                                       These corks will be really expensive: over a Euro each.