Cork bottle stoppers in the 18th century were all made by hand.
1712 Bottle Corks.
1880 Bottle Corks.
Quercus suber (Cork Oak) bark, Portugal.
Cork Cutters.
Cork Cutter.
Cork Cutter.
A Cooper's Cork Bung Punch.
Fig. one. &
2 Workers busy making jams.
3 Merchant that
matches the caps.
4 The way to
round off the cap.
5 Manner of
cutting the tip of the cap.
Established 6. A,
A, A, A, the edges of the bench on which the support for the plug cut by the
ends, as seen Fig. 5.
7 Bannette to
receive indiscriminately all kinds of plugs coming out of the hand of the
worker.
8 Bannette to
match.
9 Pierre
sharpen knives.
10 Knives.
Cork Presses for the sizing of corks.
However, we need to fast-forward to around 1660, when a French
Benedictine monk by the name of Dom Pérignon first used cork for the purpose
for which its name has become indelibly linked – as
a stopper for wine bottles. According to legend, this monk
was responsible for making sparkling wine at the Abbey of Sainte-Vannes in the
Champagne region of northern France, and was having trouble keeping in the
wooden plugs soaked in olive oil that were the stopper of choice at the time.
He noticed that compressed cork returns to its original shape when pressure is
released, making it ideal for wine bottles.
The practice boomed among the winemakers of
Europe, and there’s evidence of cork stoppers being widely used in Portugal
during the mid-18th century, when cylindrical bottles with
a uniform neck were first used for port wine in Oporto.
Strict laws governing cork production have been in place
in Portugal for more than 200 years. Cultivation is banned
uphill from
water courses, for instance. But more
importantly, bark must only be harvested from mature, healthy trees and a gap
of at least nine years must separate harvests from an
individual tree. http://www.geographical.co.uk/Magazine/Staying_power_-_Apr_13.html
The first references to cork date back to 3000 BC in China,
where it was used in fishing tackle. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians
and Persians were also familiar with the properties of cork, but it was not
until man started to produce wine that it appeared as the most suitable
material for closing the containers used to preserve it.
“You should put it into round
bottles with narrow mouths, and then stopping them close with corks, set them
in a cold cellar up to the waist in sand, and be sure that the corks be fast
tied in with strong pack thread, for fear of rising out and taking vent, which
is the utter spoil of the ale.”
The main products were stoppers for jars and
bottles. There seems to have been a high level of diversity in the size and
quality available. The household accounts of Petworth House (a stately home in
Sussex) over a period of fifty years from 1755 show payment for quart, pint,
best long, best long pint, best white, short long and fruit corks. These were
all acquired from a firm of London corkcutters. They were supplied in canvas
bags and paid for by the gross (or the dozen in the case of fruit corks.) A
writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine for
1736 complained that on trying to buy a gross of best corks, he was offered
some that were “indifferent such as I would not have bottled up water gruel
with.” On being challenged, the corkcutter returned “you didst not ask for good
corks before” and brought out some fit for use. “Beyond these he had his very
good corks, his fine corks, his superfine… seven degrees in all.”
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