The corks that seal the wine bottles come from the bark of the cork oak, which grows in Spain, Portugal and North Africa. This elastic bark contains a waxy substance that keeps moisture from passing through the wood.
About half of each cork is composed of empty space. A piece of cork barely one cm³ contains about 200 million cells filled with air. It is those air cells that allow a cork to float and be compressed to fit in a bottle. Once in the neck of the bottle, the cork expands to fill the opening, leaving out the air and moisture.
More than 340 thousand tons of cork are produced each year, with Portugal as the maximum producer. But due to the many bottles of wine that come on the market around the world, there are just enough corks to cover the demand.
The longest flight of a cork shot out of a bottle of champagne is about 31 meters!
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