Hold it! Don’t throw that cork away. It’s becoming quite a precious commodity.Harvested from the bark of cork trees, a genus of oak, the cork you find in wine bottles is prized for being porous, which allows subtle oxidation of maturing wine, as well as the slightly oaky flavor it imparts over time. Demand for cork, which spiked during the 1980s, may be blamed in part for its diminished quality, rushing the harvesting of a bark that thickens adequately only once every nine years or so. Lower-quality corks are more apt to crumble, deteriorate or dry out, and contaminants may occur any time during the production process—from before harvesting to long after bottling.
Help save the cork! There’s plenty you can do with them rather than drop them into the wastebasket. Put them in a glass container for show (or for reference if you can’t remember the label!). Use them as inlay for trays and trivets. Slice the side, and you’ve got a dandy placecard holder. Use them to protect the tips of knives or to store pushpins or safety pins. Glue them to the top of an old CD, and you’ve got a coaster—or you can give an eye-catching new look to the surface of your picnic table! Not only will you be doing something fun and creative, by recycling you’ll also be doing something good for the environment.
Tell us your favorite craft with wine corks!
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