20 Feb 2019

BIZARRE SARDINIA: SARDINIAN CORKS ARE TOP!

Sardinia Curiosities

Did you know that most of the time you are opening a good quality bottle of wine the cork has been created in #Sardinia?

Sardinia is in fact one of the main producer of high quality #corks. The main Italian and European #vineyards get the corks from Sardinian companies, maily localized in the North of #Gallura provence, in particular in AggiusBerchiddaCalangianusLurasTempio Pausania and other smaller centres. The town of Calangianus represents the main Italian centre for extraction and manufacturing of this amazing natural, light, elastic, #isolating, #waterproof element. The cork is a #naturalproduct with #specialproperties, and even if it is not very common to young people, it has been used from ages to isolate and protect. No other artificial ‘modern’ material has the same properties and multiple usages as the cork.

The cork oak plant are original in Sardinia and in few other Mediterranean countries, mainly Sicily and Spain Portugal and North Africa. It is an evergreen tree that can reach the height of 10-20 meters and a maximum circumference of 3 meters. It lives naturally up to 300 years while if subject to extraction till 2 centuries. The farmer has to go deep with the incision of the bark very carefully not to damage the mother bark. The barking process happens normally between 1st of May and 31st August when the cork gets out easily without damaging the heart of the tree.

To have a good quality barking it is necessary to wait 12 years between one extraction and the other and the very first barking process can be done only when the tree is 25-30 years old and its circumference is no less than 60 cm. Unfortunately more and more the cork oaks are damaged cause of savage incisions of the bark (over 5-6mm). When this happens the tree will not be able to produce new usable bark anymore. For this reason the cork oaks are more and more low in number. With an average lifespan of 200 years, each tree can provide thousands of bottle stoppers when cared for properly. Behind a very good wine cork there is a lot of work, and a lot of #antique knowledge, sophisticated technologies.

So let’s celebrate the tradition with a very good bottle of wine, possibly a Sardinian one!

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