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The Whistler Tree
August 16, 2011The world’s largest cork tree is The Whistler Tree, (so named because of the songbirds which occupy its huge canopy), and is located in the Alentejo region of Portugal.
The tree is 230+ years old, and has been producing corks since 1820. It was five years old when the first English settlers arrived in Australia, and six years old when the French Revolution began in 1789. Bottles of wine sealed with cork in that same year, 1789, were fairly recently discovered in a French cellar, and both the wines and corks in good condition.
The Whistler Tree is harvested every nine years with the 1991 harvest produced 1200 kilograms of bark, more than most trees yield in a lifetime, and enough cork for 100,000 wine bottles!
