Making Sense of Wine Barrels

Yesterday at Backsberg, I was filling some barrels with cabernet (pic below), and in the job of filling barrels there is an amount of time available for (constructive) daydreaming. To be fair, you can hardly take your laptop to the barrels and get through some emails whilst filling them. It requires just enough attention that you can't walk away and do something else, but not enough constant concentration to keep you focussed on that barrel the whole time.


Anyways, the point is my thoughts wondered to the whole notion of a barrel. For me, a tremendous amount of the art of wine making consists in one's barrel selection- choosing the right barrel for the right wine.


Let's take a step back for a minute to the basics:

-Made from? Wine barrels are made from Oak wood
-From? The majority of the Oak is sourced from France and to a lesser extent the US and a few other countries
-Why there? The climate is of such a nature that the trees grow at the right speed
-Right speed? Well, in SA, because it so much warmer (than France), oak trees would grow too fast for barrel production. The wood would be too porous
-Porous? In a cooler climate (such as parts of France), the trees grow slower, and the grain of the wood is finer (and less porous) resulting in a more gentle extraction.
-Extraction? This refers to how the wine takes up the wood flavour and character.


On the barrel itself there are number of clues as to its character. Firstly, there is the cooperage. This is the brand of barrel. Just like you have Nike or Addidas you have a whole range of different cooperages. The barrel pictured above is made by Francois Freres. There are number of different forests in France where the wood for the barrels originate. Some of the main forests include Allier, Limousin, Nevers, Tronçais and Vosges. The 'N' on the barrel indicates the wood is from the Nevers forest. The other major variable with barrels is toasting. When the barrel is put together the wood (on the inside of the barrel) is exposed to an open fire for a certain amount of time. This process is known as toasting. The 'MT' indicates that the barrel is of the medium toast variety. There is also a major spectrum within toasting- you can get light, medium and heavy toasts and within that, light plus or medium minus...you get the picture.

That's the basics!

The white sticker, placed so neatly on the barrel, is for our records. The wine in the barrel is the Pumphouse Shiraz 2007.

SB