tAt present, all of the cork used to manufacture natural stoppers is air dried for a minimum of 6 months. This studyevaluates the feasibility of applying a kiln drying technique to cork planks. We used a sample of 65 planks, eachof which was divided into two pieces. One sub-set of planks was air dried for 6 months following the traditionalprocedure, while the other was kiln dried for 14 days. The evolution of moisture content was controlled, and bothmethods were compared by means of a statistical analysis of the thickness, quality, porosity coefficient, color andcompressive properties of the cork.