On Wine Barrels

 

Currently, the United States produces about eight and a half percent of the world’s wine. Nearly ninety percent of this comes from California, but only six or seven percent from NapaValley. Although most of the more than 360 wineries in NapaValley use small, handmade oak barrels in producing their wine, only six or seven percent of all wine made in the world has ever been inside one.While the use of wine barrels in making wine may be a small story globally, it is a large story locally. A winery with a case production of 2,000 needs 90 barrels to produce 4,740 gallons of wine. Many barrels are used only once, and most wine barrels only last five years. New barrels are bought each year at a cost of between $300 and $1,000 apiece, depending on origin.Today, oak products like chips, powders and chunks of staves are also being offered for flavoring wine, but flavor is only part of the story.

Wooden casks have been used to store and transport liquid and dry goods for centuries. Romans adopted casks for wine as they conquered the Celts in Gaul and abandoned their clay amphorae. Louis XIV had the remaining great oak forests of France mapped and organized into royal sources of supply critical to shipbuilding. During the Napoleonic wars, when a barricade prevented Prussian oak from reaching France, she relied exclusively on her managed forests, especially for barrels.The government still manages four fifths of the forests of France and its Allier, Bourgogne, Limousin, Nevers,Tronçais and Vosges forests produce most of the barrel stave wood (as well as wood for veneer and paneling, furniture and construction). Hungary and Poland, which share the same species of oak with France, are only now once again becoming an important source of stave wood and a few cooperages have been established locally. Yugoslavia and even Eastern Mongolia have also begun to supply stave wood, but most barrels are made in France or with French oak. Cooperages in Australia, Chile, and Spain and the United States all use French oak, although here, of course, in American cooperages, American white oak predominates. Because of limited sources of supply and rates of exchange, a French barrel costs nearly twice as much as any other to buy.

After World War II, very large straightsided tanks of redwood that had been used to age and store wine in California were replaced by stainless steel and even cement. Until about twentyfive years ago most small American oak barrels were made to age Bourbon whiskey rather than wine.Theinteriors werecharred in order to give whiskey its characteristically smokey taste.These barrels had to be variously adapted for wine. Now new coopering techniques have allowed American cooperages to compete with the French and created a global market for wine barrels of American oak in addition to those for whiskey.

Our native stave wood is sawn from quartersawn logs of American white oak, Quercus alba, (and a variety, Quercus gallyana, in Oregon), whereas in France staves are split by hand from quarteror sixthsplit logs. If the French staves are not split they leak at their ends because French oak (native to most of Europe) has a different cellular structure from American white oak and its staves must follow the grain. Our white oak develops numerous fluffy stops or tyloses throughout its vertical columns of cells (think holding your finger over the end of a soda straw) as sapwood becomes supportive heartwood, so these staves can be sawn. Our red oak and the European oaks form few tyloses. The two main types of oak used for barrels in France are Sessile Oak, Quercus sessilis (or petraea) and Quercus pedunculata (or robur). All the timber cut from designated stands of these trees, which are at least 120 years old and 50 cm (20”) in diameter, is sold at auction. Only heartwood is used, and two thirds may be lost in preparation and splitting. Sawn staves, however, produce about half as much waste. These are sawn from timber cut from trees grown on private lands in stands (or hollows) and average 90 to 95 years old. Most of this wood comes from our MidWest, with a little from Oregon. The trees generally yield enough wood for two barrels; the larger French oaks give two to four barrels. Both French and American stave wood is dried outdoors for two to three years. How long stave wood is airdried—the slower the better—contributes mightily to the quality of the barrel. Staves are then made up into barrels nearby and shipped whole, or staves are shipped to a distant cooperage.

The grain of the wood, which is determined by the age, species and height of the tree, its location in the stand, and the climate of the stand has become more important than a particular forest, but country of origin for oak continues paramount because of differences in grain and tannins. American oak is denser than French and its tannins more robust. Two hundred years ago the tradition of using American oak in making barrels to age Tempranillo in Spain was one result of the Spanish occupation of New Orleans. Forty years ago in California, Paul Draper at Ridge insisted on American oak to age Cabernet as Justin Meyer at Silver Oak would ten years later; SmithMadrone and ZD currently use only American oak for their Cabernet and Vince Arroyo for his Petite Sirah. Countless other Napa Valley wineries use barrels from more than one source and cooperage to age their wines.

In the 1960’s, French cooperages began selling unassembled wine barrels in the United States. A company principal came over each year to meet established customers and reach new ones. Today, barrel brokers may represent a cooperage rather than its owner. In 1975 the expanding California market prompted Phil Burton to found Barrel Builders Napa Valley to assemble barrels. It now provides barrels, related products and services. Nadalié, a French cooperage founded in 1902, opened the first French cooperage in Napa Valley in 1980. Demptos of France, founded in 1825, swiftly followed suit, opening its Napa doors in 1982.

Most wine barrels are made in one of two sizes, the barrique which originated in Bordeaux and the piece from Burgundy. The Burgundian piece is slightly shorter and fatter than the Bordeaux and holds a dash more wine. Both are called 60 gallon or 220 liter barrels and make about 24 cases of wine; a barrique holds 59.4 gallons (225 liters), a piece 60.2 (228 liters). Both come in a thinstaved chateaustyle (with staves 2022mm wide) and a thickerstaved transport or export style (2527mm wide). Rather than six galvanized steel hoops fastened with rivets to hold the staves together, traditionalists can insist on hoops of chestnut (fastened with strips of willow) at the barrel ends and even at the bilge (the fat midsection of a barrel), and may even request the bilges of their barriques be stained red to disguise any drippage at a bung hole. Ric Forman is credited with the innovation with Nadalié of metal hoops to bind traditional chateau barrels, since chestnut does not last longer than the usual 18 months barrels are used in France, and does not stand up to reuse.

In the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s Maynard Amerine was teaching winegrowing and winemaking at UC Davis, André Tchelistcheff was in charge of winemaking at Beaulieu Vineyard with a wine consulting business on the side, and Lee Stewart was at Souverain, use for their aging wine was then widespread in California, Hanzell was the first winery to use French oak exclusively in winemaking and in 1963 Charles Krug became the first large winery to use small barrels of French oak in aging some of its wines. These barrels came from Demptos in Bordeaux. Both Peter and Bob Mondavi are credited with the innovation at Krug, and when Bob founded Robert Mondavi Winery in 1966, small French cooperage was very much in evidence as were Bob’s innovative questions about wood grain, stave thickness, air drying, and toast level. Before Bob, few had inquired how and why a barrel was made the way it was in France. Dick Graff of ChaloneVineyard andWinery and Ric Forman of Forman Vineyards, then which he had founded in 1943. All three were collegial (André had consulted for Lee early on) and all advocated using small barrels for aging red wine. In 1953, when Jim Zellerbach decided to plant vineyard and build a winery in Sonoma where he and his wife Hanna had their summer place, “Hanzell,” Jim invited Maynard, André, Lee, and every other wine great he could think of to advise him on what vines to plant and which winery equipment to buy. For aging the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay he intended to farm, Jim was advised to buy 60 gallon barrels of French oak. Hanzell’s winemaker, Brad Webb, secured barrels from Sirugue in Burgundy.

Although interest in small barrels and a limited winemaker at Sterling, were among these few. Dick, with support from Peter Newton, began importing French barrels from Sirugue along with other winery equipment in the 1960’s. Initially, the barrels came in unassembled. Dick and Ric were able to persuade Nadalié to ship barrels in the round, and other cooperages followed suit. The two also taught how and when to use the barrels—to fill, rack, and ferment. By 1976, at Stephen Spurrier’s Paris Tasting, all the California Cabernet at that tasting, from Clos du Val, Freemark Abbey, Heitz, Mayacamas, Ridge, and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, was aged in small oak barrels.