Think of a material that can be used in a spacecraft’s heat-shielding and in top-class competitive sport, that is essential to high-end viticulture and that is being used in cutting-edge architecture, and you might come up with any number of advanced plastic polymers or metal alloys recently dreamt up in a secure laboratory. But the revolutionary material in question is nothing other than cork: essential to champagne since 1688 and Pierre Pérignon, perhaps, but generally overlooked.
Yet while cork — the bark stripped from a type of oak primarily found in the Iberian peninsula — has been used since ancient times for bottle stoppers and fishermen’s floats, being light and waterproof, its many other qualities are increasingly valuable in the modern world, and new uses
