In these now imminent holidays they will be uncorked millions of bottles of sparkling wine. To jump into the houses, on the tables of the Italians will be as many caps. In Genoa some of them were made by Carlo and Rosanna Luico who in the cork factory which still bears their surname, in Ascent Santa Caterina, since 1855, just to produce them as they once did. It seems that too Giuseppe Garibaldi made use of the tap in cork that came from the oak woods of the woods rented by the ancestors of the current owners. Their shop falls under the category of the historical ones of the Ligurian capital which have never closed, retaining the original features, although over time some minor changes have occurred.

For example, in the cork casket of the Luico have appeared many glass bottles and other objects related to containers for liquids. For on the bench there is still the tool, working, which is used to cut the cork rectangles up to make corks. We keep exhibited here the photographs that testify how we Luico in have always gone to cut the fur of the logs – tell the father and daughter -, then in the laboratory we have dealt with more than a century and a half of seasoning and the subsequent stages of processing, up to boiling in large pots, followed by the creation of cylindrical shapes. We still carry out these operations now, albeit to a lesser extent than in the past.

The change of times has led to the reduction of work, for also recycling, which is important to the purposes of the health of the Earth. We have increasingly provided over the last few years to the reuse of corks at the end of their first life come bottle lids. So we collect them and send them to the factories that they build building panels – continue the Luico -, at least they can continue to perform a function. How many bottles have we corked in the course of our history? Difficult to make a calculation. Certainly for a Ligurian family and not only from this region it represents a satisfaction own a bottle with a cork made by hand using the cork of the Sardinia and Portugal, the places closest to us where the oaks are more numerous. Certain professions must be protected precisely because they represent a bridge between the past and the future. We always have worked with ethics, without ever exploiting the trees.