The Mediterranean Summer festival at Kew ran during the summer of
2007. Cork Oak
Quercus suber
Champagne Cork
The Cork Oak (Quercus suber) provides 99% of the world's natural cork, which is used for a wide range of uses from bottle stoppers to flooring to insulation, not to mention shoe insoles, dartboards, and roofing panels.
Stripping the cork bark from a cork oak is a skilled business. No trees are ever cut down; they are simply stripped of the bark on their main trunk once every 10 years, usually in late spring or early summer. The tree will grow new bark over the course of the next 10 years. The cork from a first stripping of a cork oak tree is usually very hard and is used for flooring and insulation. Only once the tree has been stripped three or more times does it yield good enough cork to be used for wine stoppers.
Cork is light, natural, and recyclable. Its uses are many, due to its natural properties and honeycomb structure - it is elastic, compressible, a good insulator, fireproof and is impermeable to gases.
The European cork industry produces 340,000 tonnes of cork a year, with a value of € 1.5 billion and employing 30,000 people. Wine corks represent 15% of cork usage by weight but 66% of revenues.
Spain and Portugal are the largest cork producing countries in the world but cork oaks are grown in many countries including Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Italy and France where many rural communities depend on them for their livelihoods.