In Italy it is commonplace to buy wine in bulk- sfuso it's called. One takes large ~5gal bottles to the winery or wine shop and then rebottles it at home into standard 750ml bottles to serve it from. Thus every little mo m and pop store carries bags of wine corks for this purpose. I suspect the easy availability of corks in bulk contributed to their use as bar plugs.
Kurt Sperry Bellingham WA
On 12/12/05, brianbaylis@juno.com <brianbaylis@juno.com> wrote:
>
>
> I have a totally original 1971 GC that still has the
> original white cloth tape on it and the original "bar plugs". What bar
> plugs. My bike has a cork covered with white vinyl plastic tape over it
> jammed in the bar. Totally factory and original. I think that's why they
> forgot bar plugs in Carlsbad. They were "improvising" in Italy.
>
> --
> fineartscrimshaw.com