Friday, 13 September 2013

Wine Geekery: Oak Barrels and how they're made...

Several important players play their part in the making of a bottle of wine. The elusive terroir, the grapes, the winemaker and (if the wine is oaked) the barrel. This isn't just important to fancy wine geeks with nothing better to do - if you've ever picked a chardonnay because you like your whites on the creamy side, you've got oak to thank. And if you're looking at the ever-decreasing weather and hankering after a big, spicy, toasty glass of red with vanilla undertones... well, if you didn't have oak you'd be drinking ribena, probably. Them oak barrels are important.

Now, barrels are really expensive - easily £450 each - and need to be replaced every five or so years (some wineries replace them much more frequently). The price seems ridiculous but these barrels don't fall out of the tree ready-made - making them is a very tricky business indeed. With some visual aids, I hope to explain why...

First, you must select the wood. There are HUGE forests in France which supply the wood for barrels. You pick your trees according to what flavours you want from the oak - it's a very exact science studied by wine boffins the world over. The trees are chopped down and split length ways and sliced into precise strips resembling elongated jenga blocks.

Next, you arrange your carefully cut strips into a circle using metal loops as demonstrated above - bearing in mind that there can be no gaps at all... else all the wine will pour out at the seams (NOT GOOD). Once that's all aligned you beat the loops down a little and then..... gets sent off to be "toasted". This process seems a little like asking for trouble if you ask me. You place your barrel over an open flame and by the science of "judging by eye"-ology, you roast the inside of the barrel until it's ready. The more it is toasted, the more oaky your wine will taste. Lightly toasted for Sauvignon Blanc (about ten minutes over the flame), all the way up to the stonking great reds which need more of a well-done approach (about twenty minutes over the flame). If you ever open a bottle of wine and it tastes like how a lit match smells then the barrel was a little over cooked.

Next step is to put on the top and bottom of the barrel. These crucial parts are made of strips stuck together in the same way as laminate flooring. They are then sliced into a perfect circle by a fancy machine.

The top and bottom are wedged into place by brute force and stuck there using (you'll never believe this) flour and water. So this man's job is half barrel technician, half pastry chef. I may not go round his house for dinner.

Next, the barrel is cleaned up, more metal loops put around and then it is popped into this huge machine which pushes and pulls the loops into perfect position....and there you have a barrel.

There is one final step though....time to make your barrel look good! Lasers are used to etch designs into the wood according to the wishes of the domaine to which the barrel is destined. Finally you can have the pick of all the colours of the rainbow for your loops....aah, the possibilities!


  1. I recently learnt that in Burgundy, the barrels are toasted over embers rather than over a flame as not to impart too much smokiness into the wine. Barrels are surprisingly interesting!

  2. Once you open up any type of bottle of wine, in the past it was impossible to store it, nowadays you can quite easily store a bottle of wine for a day or two through the use of a vacuum pump. These valuable little items cost roughly fifteen dollars and function by literally vacuuming out the excess air that is contained within the bottle by way of a slit in the top of the rubber replacement cork.

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