Of all natural materials, cork is one of those with highest importance from ancient times until nowadays.

In fact, its slightness, permeability, capacity to resist to rottenness, thermo and acoustic resistance, flexibility, elasticity, compressibility, and other mechanic properties, make it a perfect material.

But cork sums to all of these reasons something fabulous: it’s renewable, reusable and recyclable, being insubstitutable.

The most easily notable qualitative characteristics that condition the industrial yield are: texture, structure, colour, specific weight and the absence of parasites.

The cork oak (tree from which the cork is harvested), like any other vegetal species, can vegetate in almost every environment; nevertheless, it has a natural preference for the Mediterranean climate, and inside it, has proven to have a particular adaptation to the southern Portugal.

As a matter of fact, Portugal has approximately half the world cork production and about a third of its total area.

Regarding quality, Azaruja’s region is probably the main national excellence area, not only for its geologic and climatic characteristics, but also for the best treatment to the surrounding cork oak fields – fruits of an ancestral symbiosis of knowledge between the farmer and the preparer (plank producer).