Will Jamieson

Master Cooper and Managing Partner
Demptos Napa

Interview by Priscilla Upton

Will Jamieson started with Demptos Napa 27 years ago as one of its four original coopers, however, he has been a barrel maker for 41 years. He is from Keith, Scotland where Chivas Regal is the main employer.Will was 15 when he tried out for a year at a cooperage and was then accepted for a fiveyear indentureship. Today he is a managing partner not only of Demptos Napa but also of the cooperage where he began, Isla, which was recently acquired by François Frères. At Demptos, Will oversees 30 coopers who produce 128 barrels a day from finished staves trucked into the cooperage for 900 clients, 200 of whom make Cabernet in Napa and Sonoma County. About 65 percent of the staves are American oak and 35 percent French. At the moment, ten million staves are drying in the lumberyard of McGinnisWood Products of Cuba, Missouri. As they are deemed dry they are bundled into sets, loaded onto pallets and shipped by container to Demptos Napa.

There are 30 to 32 staves in a barrel: each is 40 inches (95 cm) long. A 100pound set or shook of staves is carefully set into a circular form and two guiding truss hoops slipped over its upper ends.The nascent barrel is sprayed with water and set over a fire, its free ends held by an iron form in the floor. As the wood warms, the form tightens, bending the staves. Additional truss hoops are slipped down as the bend is made. Now the barrel is ready to toast over another fire that reaches halfway up the barrel’s interior. A heat gun measures its inside and outside temperature as the barrel toasts; a barrel master flips the barrel over at the critical moment. After toasting, to caramelize sugars in the oak, a bunghole is drilled and cauterized, and then the barrel is ready for finishing.Will resignedly observes that this requires taking off and putting hoops back on many times. Stave ends are precisely trimmed and a groove or croze is cut inside both barrel ends, paste piped into the grooves, and the heads, which may also have been toasted at a customer’s request, fitted into the grooves (head trimmings feed the fires for bending and toasting barrels). Cattail leaves from upper NewYork State caulk the seams of the head (heads are 27% of a barrel’s interior surface, notesWill), and six to eight riveted hoops cut from miles of galvanized Swedish steel fasten the barrel.The exterior is carefully sanded and the interior tested and corrected for flaws (leaks). All barrels are made to order; this may include burning a logo by laser onto the head or bilge as well as marking its specifications. A travel bung is inserted; each barrel is shrinkwrapped and ready to ship.The cooperage also maintains an inventory of stave wood for repairs, since a barrel may fall or get hit in the course of its useful life (usually between one and five years) in a winery.