Reading the recent wine threads in this and other forums got me to thinking about something. We’ve got a lot of wine drinkers here and, by extension, a lot of wine corks being generated / produced / freed from the confines of bottlish encumbrances.
Question: What then happens to all these corks? Are they simply tossed? Saved? Put to utilitarian or artistic uses around the house?
I’ve only come across one good use for them but would certainly be interested in any others, seeing as how there’s probably a thousand or so just patiently awaiting their fate in an old plastic bag in my garage. They’re bound to be getting pretty bored with that by now.
Every so often I’ll head down to a hobby shop, Michael’s MJ Designs is our most convenient. There they’ve got wreaths made of grapevines in different sizes. Some are smaller ovals maybe a foot and a half across. Others are bigger and would easily cover the better half of a door. Them’s what I get… the bigguns.
I’ll put one of those wreaths on a work bench, break out the bag of corks and pick out those with the most impressive names and embellishments and, armed with a glue gun and plenty of reserve sticks, begin to glue the corks onto the wreath. I glue them with the long axis of the cork aligned with the long axis of the wreath and first place a row next to each other working from the inside circle perpendicularly across to the outside circle. Then I’ll move down 3/4 of a cork length, lay it on top of the last row and at a slight downward angle and glue that row of maybe 6 to 8 across, then move down again and again until I’ve worked full circle. That last row is then wedged slightly under the very first and Voila, a beautiful wreath of corks of the better vintages one has enjoyed.
Certainly other uses exist too. Anything you’d care to plug?
I find they do a good job of plugging up the leaking form holes in the poured foundation of my house.
And they’re good for filling up that drawer in my kitchen that I don’t really need.
You can make a corkboard – cut them in half, glue them to a thin board of desired size, in a running bond, basket weave, herringbone, or other interesting pattern, and add a frame.
I know other countries like Australia and Canada have recyclingprograms, but I haven’t heard of anything similar in the US.
The company I work for used to give old or otherwise unusable (never used, samples, etc.) corks to local schools and daycares in the area for arts and crafts, until parents complained that the logo printed on them was advertising wine to children or something. So people here in the office find creative uses for them, mostly simple things like cork boards, trivets, or wreaths, but there are a few elaborate sculptures around here, like animals, vehicles, grape clusters, replicas of famous sculptures like The Thinker, etc., all kinds of things.
I promise you that if a thousand people do reply with tails of cork, I will in fact start a additional thread on the practice.
I googled on the use of wine corks and found some of the things mentioned here like trivets and table tops. In the links though the wreaths they’re selling for $45 are cheap looking and just have a few dozen corks in them and are haphazardly arranged. I promise you that if instead you use the big woven grapevine wreaths as your base you’ll end up with a much more beautiful final product. I believe the ones I make probably have about 300 to 350 corks in them. We first saw one at a winery hanging alone up an a rustic wall, all 200 or so corks from that particular winery (Becker). It was so beautiful it was all the wall needed for decoration. I wish I could find a picture of one as these definately are a horse of a different color.
Alas I’ve noticed a move to artificial cork (at least in the cheap ass 10$ bottles I can afford ). So very little real cork has made it’s way into the zoid household as of late
Okay, I’ve read articles about the fake cork, and the experts (at least some of them) said the fakes are better for the wine, even if the romance is lost. I don’t know if there’s a final word on the subject.
The cork boards and trivets are a good idea, and they use a lot more corks than you think. It’s hard to make them turn out as perfect as they show in magazines and such because some corks are shorter or wider than others. You can make it work though, and we even used a few champagne corks if a spot was too big. Mrs. SMW and I also used to write the date on the cork whenever we opened a bottle of wine, especially if was a special occasion. When constructing the board, we were found corks from multiple anniversaries (including our 1st), New Year’s Eves, V-Days, B-Days, etc.
MsRobyn, what with you being a Cowboy fan and all, you let me know next time any acquaintance of your starts another “Onward march” rant and I’ll be happy to provide you with all the corks you deem necessary. No charge, on me, gratis, I couldn’t possibly resist!
That, my friend, is the best use for them anyone could possibly come up with.
