Day Trip to Cork Supply Facility

Went to visit a cork supply company recently, to see how the other side lives.

Cork is grown in Portugal, punched in Portugal and then flown over to the states to be distributed.  A truck recently dropped off hundreds of bales for testing.

This shows how they punch cork out of the bark.  A worker tries to cut as far away from the bark as possible because that is where the fungus that produces TCA lives.

Inside the wear house where they keep bales of cork.  A bale is 10,000 corks.

Once the corks have been printed with the winery logo, they are kept in mesh bags to let the ink better settle.

This machine prints the logo on the side of the cork.  A separate machine fire brands the end of the cork.  Since the end touches the wine, it is fire branded instead of printed with ink.

For large volumes, places like this do 50 to 100 cork soaks on every bale that comes to them to test for TCA.  

Unlike in the lab, where I soak corks individually.

For this they need a lot of wine.

I thought we went through a lot of wine.  Here they buy Franzia by the palate.  I frequently wonder how much Franzia is used by other people in the winemaking industry instead of being drunk by consumers.  Probably not a lot interms of percentage of sales, but probably significant in terms of volume.

-L