Cork Matters presents
Love Your Earth
The story of cork, from a forest in Portugal to the table in your home.
38.6° N, 7.9° W
Alentejo, Portugal
Portugal is home to a third of the world’s cork oak forests and produces around half of its cork. Most of it grows here, on the rolling plains of the Alentejo.
Quercus suber
The cork oak
A tree that can live for more than two hundred years, and is never cut down to give us its bark.
Every nine years
The harvest
Skilled hands strip the bark by axe. The trunk underneath glows red, and the tree simply grows itself a new coat.
Light · elastic · waterproof
Cork bark
Millions of tiny air-filled cells make it one of nature’s most remarkable materials.
Step one
Stoppers first
The finest bark is punched into wine stoppers. That is where most of the world’s cork goes.
What is left behind
Where our story starts
The punched strips and offcuts that the stopper industry leaves behind.
Nothing wasted
Broken down, made new
We break the leftovers down into granules, then bond them back together into something you can keep for a lifetime.
Cork Matters
Cookie
A bowl made from cork agglomerate, born from the offcuts of wine stoppers. Light, warm to the touch, and kind to the planet.
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