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Here are the first data from my cork immersion experiment. A cork extracted some time past from a Cloudy Bay SB was immersed in water (held under the surface by weight) for 48 hours. Mass before immersion: 3.082 g. After removal from bath, the exterior of the cork was dried with a paper towel. Observation: the cork was noticeably larger and its surface had darkened somewhat. Mass after immersion: 4.444 g. Change in mass: 1.362 g (44%).
An obvious problem with this experiment is that the exposed surface area of this cork was far greater than that of a cork enclosure in a wine bottle (and that the cork was in its uncompressed state). This leads to the question of whether the absorption of water had occurred only in the outermost portions of the cork, or whether water had been (more or less) uniformly absorbed. To this end, I took a lateral section of the cork several millimeters above one end. This section showed uniform coloration and, when squeezed, produced water from the center region as well as from the periphery.
I confess that the degree to which this cork absorbed water surprised me. While the value obtained here surely represents an upper limit to the amout one could expect to enter a compressed cork enclosure, it still strongly supports the idea that the cork enclosure of a wine bottle does absorb water. Though the cork was chosen at random from my wife's collection, I have no reason to doubt that it's representative of the species as a whole. I will soon perform the complementary experiment, however, and weigh a cork immediately upon its removal from a wine bottle, then again after several days spent in a vacuum desiccator to remove absorbed moisture. Results from this experiment will appear as a reply to this post (to avoid newsgroup clutter).
Mark Lipton
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