How Millennials (Almost) Killed the Wine Cork

No one is completely sure who first came up with the idea for cork wine stoppers, though legend holds that it was the 17th-century monk Dom Pérignon. Perhaps he does deserve the credit; perhaps some other cellar master was the first to abandon convention and seal his glass wine bottles with cork stoppers over wooden plugs. Regardless of who created the wine cork, the invention would go on to become wildly successful: For the past 400 years, cork has been the preferred material for wine closures.