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ITALIAN CORK, TRADITION AND INNOVATION
Roma - (Adnkronos Multimedia) - An ancient tradition, whose roots go back through the centuries, or rather millennia, in which Italy, and in particular Sardinia, is one of the world's leading producers of Cork products (www.federlegno.it). There are over 130 businesses dealing with the collection and processing of the bark of cork oaks, with almost 3000 people working in the sector and an overall annual turnover of nearly € 150 million, 40% of which is accounted for by international markets, in particular France, Germany, the United States, and Australia.
The productive process, from the extraction of the raw material up to the finished product, is only apparently simple, and requires long experience and great individual skill. The extraction of the raw material is the first stage in the cycle of transforming cork. Detaching the cork from the trunk is performed between the months of May and August. This operation, which must not damage the growth layer, is performed by specialised workers, the so-called "scorzini", who have worked the same way for centuries, armed with a sharp knife, with which they cut into the bark without damaging the phellogen, the internal layer of the bark which will produce new cork growth. The bark is stripped at regular intervals of around 10 to 12 years. This is the opposite of any intensive agroindustrial activity, where the fruits of the land are harvested and processed even twice a year. Here, in the mountains of Sardinia, each oak can provide no more than seven harvests for each century of its life. And transporting the cork towards the processing centres is equally slow and difficult. The cork is harvested in the forest, far from roads and communications infrastructures, and still today the only way to carry it is on your shoulders, as has been the way for millennia.
Where technological innovation has been adopted is in the subsequent phases. In the collection centres, there work specialised staff who carry out an initial examination and separate the cork on the basis of its quality. They perform the first checks to identify possible material defects and any tree diseases which could compromise the wood's use for the production of wine corks.
After this examination and selection phase, it is once more time for a long wait, to allow the cork to become seasoned. Seasoning takes a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years. The sheets of Cork are stored in piles, so that they lose humidity and are purged of some impurities, such as the so-called red dust. If the cork were not seasoned this dust would enter the cork and consequently the wine, altering its organoleptic characteristics. In this phase the raw material must not undergo any industrial treatment whatsoever.
Once seasoning is finished, the cork is ready for boiling, another important phase during which the cork becomes thicker and more flexible, and the parasites contained in the bark are eliminated, the content of water soluble substances is reduced and tannin is expelled. In this phase the pores of the cork, open during the period of exposure to atmospheric agents, close up, and the cork loses its characteristic curve, to become flat in appearance. Only after this phase can the processing cycle really begin. The planks, classified by expert workers according to visual quality and thickness, are cut into strips and then into corks, using automatic machinery.
Lastly quality control and the final selection, which are also carried out by automatic machinery, able to sort over 10,000 corks per hour. After a further phase of final washing, the corks are ready to be sent to wine producing areas the world over, from the French estates in Bordeaux and Burgundy, to producers all over Italy, and as far afield as the wineries of California and Australia.
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