Considering the world's long familiarity with and daily dependence on cork, it's strange that so few know where it comes from. Ask and you'll trigger wild conjecture ranging from "the bottom of the sea" to "the petrified forest". Unlike petroleum, gas, coal and other diminishing natural resources, cork is the outer bark that grows on replenishable, renewable, inexhaustible evergreen oaks known by the Latin name Quercus (oak) Suber (cork).

Nature has been parsimonious in the way it has distributed this many-faceted natural alternative on the face of the globe. Almost 80% of the world's cork comes from the Iberian Peninsula - Portugal (51%) and Spain (28%) where soil, temperature, rainfall, and wind conditions are ideal. Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia on the shore of North Africa are also hospitable to Quercus Suber but on a smaller industrial scale. The cork tree regenerates its precious outer layer 12 or 13 times during its 150-year lifetime. The first stripping (virgin bark) occurs when the tree is between 15 and 20 years of age. Subsequent yields follow at 8 to 10 year intervals. Most of cork's distinctive properties stem from its completely cellular structure.

A one-inch cube of natural cork contains approximately as many cells as there are people in the United States- -more than 200 million tiny air-filled units, 50% of which consist of captive air. This unique cellular structure results in cork having a specific gravity of only 0.25 and accounts for its remarkable buoyancy, compressibility, elasticity, and relatively high degree of imperviousness to both air and water penetration as well as its high coefficient of friction and low thermal conductivity.

The more one contemplates the boundless problem solving adaptability of cork the more one must agree with the admiring appraisal of the Portuguese Poet-Philosopher who said, "When Mother Nature made cork, she over-designed it".

Although its most common use is to seal liquids in bottles (wine, champagne, oils), other uses include: gaskets, expansion joints, insulation, tile, bulletin boards, tape, fungus resistant treatment, joint sealing, acoustics, vibration control, flooring, carpet and underlayment, wall covering, ceiling tile, footwear, fishing rod handles and bobbers, duck decoys, musical instruments, decorative planters and ice buckets to name a few.

Cork worldwide today is a $300 million industry - all sprung from a tiny acorn that grows into a mighty oak.