ChangeMe
Grape Picker
Posts:4
 | | 02/24/2005 8:11 PM |
| | Often when reading about a wine it will quote "25% new Oak barrels". Does that mean that 75% of the wine vintage was from old oak barrels or do they make barrels that are 25% new and 75% old? This would require busting up used barrels and mixing the wood to make new? | | | |
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Budman
Master of Wine
Posts:11833
| | 02/24/2005 8:16 PM |
| Welcome to VC!
I believe that this means 25% of the barrels used were new, and 75% of the barrels had been used before. | | | |
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ChangeMe
Grape Picker
Posts:4
| | 02/24/2005 8:36 PM |
| | That can't be it, or 9 bottles out of every 12 bottle case would taste different. | | | |
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Budman
Master of Wine
Posts:11833
| | 02/24/2005 8:39 PM |
| | Not really. After the wine has been aged in the barrels, it can be put back into stainless steel tanks from all the different barrels and bottled from the tanks. | | | |
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JimmyV
Central Connecticut
Wine Connoisseur
Posts:5015
| | 02/24/2005 9:48 PM |
| Welcome.
Wine is routinely blended from different barrels to promote the best possible product, as well as to ensure marketplace consistency. If a winery has 4 new barrels and 16 'year-old' barrels, it will blend together the liquid from all 20 barrels before bottling. What you end up with is a wine that was raised in 25% new oak. Without the blending, one case of wine would be from all new oak, and another case of wine would be from all 'year-old' barrels. The purchasers of the two respective cases would be getting two entirely different tasting wines. Wineries cannot withstand that type of variation. By blending the wine, everyone gets a "homogenized" product. | |
Beta testing a new signature. | |
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Rothko
Palm Beach
Wine Thief
Posts:2849
| | 02/24/2005 10:28 PM |
| | What is the purpose of using 25% new oak as compared to buying 100% new barrels? Is it a cost issue only (ie: defraying new purchases over 4 years instead of 1) or a consistency issue (wine produced in 100% new oak will taste different from the wine produced the following year)? | | | |
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JonesWineNo1
Sommelier
Posts:8568
| | 02/24/2005 10:36 PM |
| | Different wines can handle different levels of exposure to new oak therefore the exposure to new oak for a given wine varies. How much depends on multiple factors including the tonnellier, the country of origin for the oak, the forest, the level of toast, winery philosophy, the concentration of the wine in question, the varietal, etc. Its a long list. Many if not most wines can't handle 100% new oak aging. | | | |
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Bob Bressler
Napa Valley
Wine Lover
Posts:4809
| | 02/24/2005 11:52 PM |
| JimmyV and JWN1 have it right, but there are always exceptions. In JimmyV's scenario of 4 and 16 barrels, the best blend might be the 4 new oak barrels and 14 of the 1 year old barrels. If the winery is focusing on quality they might release that as their primary blend and bottle the other 2 barrels under a different label or bulk it out.
In addition, wineries typically use barrels from different sources to get greater complexity in the wine.
Note that DRC bottled from the barrel (i.e. without blending) until the mid 80s. I've heard that HdV is doing the same thing. That is the conflict with minimal movement of the wine versus barrel variation. | | | |
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Pool Boy
Laurl, MD (DC suburb)
Master of Wine
Posts:13660
| | 02/25/2005 2:46 AM |
| Quote:
....How much depends on multiple factors including the tonnellier, the country of origin for the oak, the forest, the level of toast, winery philosophy, the concentration of the wine in question, the varietal, etc......
OK I looked in three online dictionaries... What does tonnellier mean? | |
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ChangeMe
Master of Wine
Posts:12891
| | 02/25/2005 4:20 AM |
| | welcome to vc tpety. you came to the right place to ask questions. | | | |
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David Niederauer
Los Gatos, CA
Master Sommelier
Posts:15709
| | 02/25/2005 5:58 AM |
| Quote:
Quote:
....How much depends on multiple factors including the tonnellier, the country of origin for the oak, the forest, the level of toast, winery philosophy, the concentration of the wine in question, the varietal, etc......
OK I looked in three online dictionaries... What does tonnellier mean?
Yeah?
Do you mean "tonneau"? That is a volume measurement of wine. It has changed over the years (centuries) but now means "100 cases of wine". | | | |
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ChangeMe
Grape Puncher
Posts:886
| | 02/25/2005 8:36 AM |
| I think Dan means "Tonnellerie" which means barrel maker (more like barrel company than cooper). It gets kind of complicated. There are different forests where the wood comes from, like Troncais, Limousin, Alliers, Nevers etc. There are different barrel producers (Tonnellerie), like Sequin Moreau, Rousseau, Sirugue, Radoux, etc. There are different levels of toast (heat curing); light, medium, heavy and hyphenated toasts in between. If you were to equate a winemaker with a chef, the variety of barrels, among other things, is the winemaker's spice rack.
There are lots of schools of thought. At Brewer-Clifton, they use only one kind of barrel, feeling that that is the best way to express the vineyard. Others may feel that wines from different vineyards can only reach their full potential by matching the wine with the "right" oak. Sean Thackrey, actually has lots of barrels (a luxury) and picks from them after tasting the fruit during crush.
FWIW, there do exist barrel makers that use different woods in the same barrel. I haven't heard of different ages of wood in the same barrel, but I have a friend who is a barrel refurbisher, who I could pose the question to. It would probably be a cool thing for a Crushpad customer, for example, making a single barrel of Syrah or Grenache, to use a Seguin Moreau Barrel with 1/3 new 1/3 one year old and 1/3 neutral staves. | | | |
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Budman
Master of Wine
Posts:11833
| | 02/25/2005 10:16 AM |
| Off topic... Hey, Tpety. Do you front a band called the Heartbreakers???  | | | |
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KillerB
Barrel Racker
Posts:1533
| | 02/25/2005 11:38 AM |
| Maths bigot here.
4 new plus 16 old is 20. 4/20*100 = 20%
For it to be 25% you'd need 5 new plus 15 old.
Apart from that - carry on as before.
Hang on change of plan - logistics. If you only do 5 barrels new this year, how are you going to get 15 one-year-old barrels next year? Just a thought. Carry on. | | | |
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Budman
Master of Wine
Posts:11833
| | 02/25/2005 11:40 AM |
| | KillerB... what do you expect from a lawyer??? | | | |
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dbw4
Grape Puncher
Posts:902
| | 02/25/2005 2:06 PM |
| So where are the old oak barrels from? Are they previously used to age wine?
DBW | | | |
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JonesWineNo1
Sommelier
Posts:8568
| | 02/25/2005 3:42 PM |
| My two years of French back in the stone age obviously did not help my spelling
***
Yes.
***
There is a market for used oak barrels. A winery that needs to add to their stock of old barrels can purchase them basically just like new barrels. There are wineries that age all of their wine or most of their wine in new oak every year (for example many high end Cabernet producers). That means the once used barrels go to someone else every year. | | | |
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JimmyV
Central Connecticut
Wine Connoisseur
Posts:5015
| | 02/25/2005 3:59 PM |
| Re: Math...What budman said.
tj: I think you might have mentioned once or twice on this board that you are headed out to Napa soon. Given the academic interest you have in all things wine, if you haven't already, you should book the Del Dotto cave tour. Without opining or editorializing on the operation or the quality of the wine, (it seems to get controversial here at times), I think it is fair to say that no other winery visit gives one so comprehensive a look into the use of barrels and the effect that barrel decisions have on the finished product. | |
Beta testing a new signature. | |
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Budman
Master of Wine
Posts:11833
| | 02/25/2005 4:02 PM |
| JimmyV - good suggestion! I would also recommend (if TJ is going to be there on a Wednesday) to book a tour at David Arthur... and plan to spend the entire day with David Long in the unfinished caves.
It was a real highlight last summer. | | | |
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Pool Boy
Laurl, MD (DC suburb)
Master of Wine
Posts:13660
| | 02/25/2005 5:44 PM |
| Thanks all for the explanation. I had actually suspected that that might be the case. I've often wondered about the different barrels used and the ages of the barrels and whether they have been used before or not. Very interesting stuff. Now for some more questions...
I assume barrels used for red wine can be used again for other red wines. Can they be used for white wines, too (I assume not)?
As a follow on to the prior question, if a given barrel was used for a given varietal or blend of red wine, can it be used for a different varietal or blend of wine the next time it is used or will it introduce non-varietal-specific notes to the new wine being used in the 'used' barrel?
JimmyV, thanks for the suggestion. I'd almost forgotten about the Del Dotto Cave Tour. I'll have to drop cave girl a PM. Thanks for the reminder!!
Bud--If I go to David Arthur, am I going to end up falling for David Arthur wines (which I probably can't afford)? | |
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