M4E #36: This is where your wine corks come from and how they are made
Today I will make an exception and show you 2 videos (it will take you less than 10 minutes in total to watch them). I’m doing it because I think in the case we are covering today (wine corks) is quite important to know also where they come from and how cork is collected. So, first of all, I present you a video from Great Big Story, where this collection process is explained. Afterwards, you may watch the video from Jamie Goode showing the (quite manual) industrial process to manufacture wine corks.
Time for Insights… and Homework!
Cork is one of the biggest industries in Portugal and in fact it’s the leading producer in the world with more than 50% of the world cork production. The cork market is mainly tied to countries with wine production, here you can see some figures from last year production in Portugal.
As you can see, machines can’t solve every problem (at least for now) and cork harvesting remains a manual task. You can see in both videos how some safety measures have been taken and other tasks may be greatly improved. Try to identify them.