Barreling Forward

It's now getting towards fall and that means crush time. The real action (part 1) is about to begin.

 

I procured barrels from 3 different sources, all through Wine Business Monthly. Since I'm getting between 8 and 9 tons worth of grapes; that translates to roughly 630 cases, using a very optimistic figure of 70 cases per ton. This is on the high side, 65 or so per ton is more realistic. Still, you don't want to be short of barrels, so I have 31. There are 25 cases per barrel so I have over 750 cases worth of capacity - as usual I over shopped.

 

I purchased 8 barrels from Meza barrel Company in Santa Maria. Since I was in Santa Maria frequently (Allan Hancock College is in Santa Maria) it was easy enough to go take a look at what they had. The ones I was interested in were $90 each and the manager was uncertain whether they had been used once or twice. I took this to mean they had been used twice. Normally barrels have 3 to 4 uses in them before they stop imparting oak flavors to the wine and become "neutral". Neutral oak is still useful, as wine aged in oak will be different than wine aged in, say, stainless steel, mostly due to micro-oxygenation.

 

There is a funny sequence in Mondovino, a highly biased film that laments the homogenization of the wine industry. Although Mondovino makes some good points the film goes out of its way to make buffoons out of wine industry figures it disapproves of. One of those is Michel Rolland, a Pomerol based "flying winemaker" who is in great demand the world over. Rolland has attracted tremendous criticism from many sectors for creating wines all over the world that taste similar (I can't vouch for this yea or nay since I can't afford his clients' products). His other accomplishment is usually to increase sales of the clients' wines, sometimes very dramatically. In the film he is shown running in to 2 or 3 wineries, screaming "microoxygenate!" and then running back out to his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, presumably off to the next winery to repeat the process.

 

Meza Barrel Company is outside Santa Maria, about 10 miles past the airport. The barrels are housed in an enormous hangar, stacked 30 high - there must have been over 5000 barrels there, most for sale but some ready to be broken up for wood. The wine world is up to its ears in used barrels and most any winery will let you have all the old barrels you want if you haul them away.

 

I was more interested in the somewhat newer barrels, so we strolled through the dark unlit building. It's a great setting for a horror movie, perhaps a deranged killer living amongst the barrels in the dark corner of the warehouse, picking off unsuspecting winemakers looking for a few good barrels.

Armed with the tiny flashlight I keep in my car I inspected the inventory. The ones I was interested in were near the front thankfully, so there was a bit of daylight helping me out. The truth of the matter is that I knew I wanted French oak but beyond that I have no idea how the various barrels would affect my wine. Some looked less used than others but I felt this might be misleading, although of course I didn't want any falling apart at the seams.

 

As with all things in winemaking there is much ongoing debate about barrels and cooperage. French oak commands the highest price and is considered the best product. At this writing a new French oak barrel will cost $1100 in the U.S. An American oak barrel is considerably less, and they are widely used for certain wines (e.g. zinfandel) and not at all for certain others (e.g. pinot noir). Eastern European oak is also gaining a following, most notably Hungarian but also Russian, Rumanian, Slovenian, etc.

 

The French have by far the most comprehensive oak program. There are several forests, replanting has been regularly undertaken since the 19^th century and the oak is usually aged from 2 to 3 years before being sold to cooperages. There are many cooperages. Some common wisdom says that the cooper has a greater influence on the taste of the wine than the forest used for the wood, others say it's a subtle nuance at most. The barrels are toasted (charred on the inside) after construction: there is light, medium and heavy toast. There is also medium+ toast, which I guess is between medium and heavy. The great majority of barrels used for red wines are medium and medium+ toast - I have never seen a barrel marked "heavy" toast.

 

In the winemaking class Norm brought in barrel samples of the same pinot noir that was aging in 3 different brands of new French oak. It was quite a revelation, as the wine from each barrel tasted noticeably different. Norm explained what he looked for in each barrel e.g. tannic structure, oak flavor, more gradual aging, etc. I had a similar experience when Norm brought in a guest speaker who was a rep for several French coopers on the West Coast - sure enough the same trial was repeated, also with pinot noir, and the whole class noticed distinct differences across the different barrels.

 

So what does it all mean? It means experience counts and it means I'm winging it. Since all of my barrels are at least 11/2 years old (in terms of use) it's a double edged sword. The oak flavors I'm going to get will be muted at best but it's possible I will gain little in experience as to how a certain barrel tastes.

 

At Meza I selected 8 barrels - 4 Saury, 2 Quintessa and 2 Roberts and Sons. I took the Saury since Saury is widely used and I've seen it everywhere - how much damage can it do? I took the Roberts and Sons because it was from Nevers, one of the smaller French forests. I've never heard of Roberts and Sons but I liked the exotic aspect of using Nevers oak. And I'm sure I took the Quintessas for some good reason but I can't remember why.

 

After shaking hands on the deal I looked up Nevers, seeing that it was a robust flavored wood generally used for heavy reds. Hmm, heavy red is not the style I'm going for but on the other hand, maybe that means they'll have more left after 2 vintages. Or maybe it means nothing. Or something completely different - for all I know the "heavy reds" presumably aged in these barrels soak up all the oak early on.

 

Roger quoted me $200 for shipping to Solano County. I have an old Nissan pickup truck but that will only fit 2 barrels. After exploring alternatives I had to pony up the shipping costs - the barrels are now in Solano County and my "miscellaneous expense" line item has taken another hit.

 

I returned to Wine Business Monthly for more barrels; I figured I needed 20 more and sure enough Signorello, an upscale winery in Napa had plenty of 3 and 4 year old French oak barrels. The 3 year olds were $30 and the 4 year olds were $25, so I sprung for the 3 year olds. I called Pierre, the winemaker at Signorello and asked him what make the barrels were. Now, I've been stressing that the various brands don't mean much to me in the context of my wine, nor would it matter that much for 3 year old barrel but you never know, I might learn something. Pierre chuckled and replied "what does it matter with 3 year old barrels?"

 

Fair enough, but it never hurts to ask. These are my neutral oak barrels.

 

I had also been in contact with Larkmead, an even more upscale winery in Napa. At this point I had 28 barrels, but not a lot of oak flavor. Larkmead had a whole assortment of nice barrels, used "1½ times". What this means is that Larkmead ages their red wines for 18 to 22 months, roughly double what you would expect, thus they were used once, but for a long time. I ordered 2 Sylvains and 1 Damptos. I had read somewhere that Sylvain was a sort of highly regarded secret weapon among French oak cooperage. I got the Damptos because Roger at Meza had sold a lot of Damptos the right before I got there and they just looked so nice, so what the hell.

 

I did more research on Sylvain and luckily they were widely considered superior for syrah in particular and reds in general. Larkmead later informed me the Damptos was gone, so I got an additional Sylvain. The 3 Sylvains are my "new" barrels, as silly as that sounds. It's all relative when you're doing it on a shoestring.

 

I had Sal arrange to pick up the 2 additional lots, so everything is now at the Solano County facility. When you have barrels you need racks, which the barrels rest on, allowing them to be stacked and transported via forklift. Sal charged me $175 to pick up the barrels and $300 for 15 double racks. What was that about miscellaneous expenses?

 

My preliminary plans for the barrels are:

 

For the Grenache:

 

I'm getting between 1 and 2 tons, which means between 2 and 4 barrels

 

1 Sylvain, 1 Roberts and Son, 1 Saury and the rest neutral

 

For the Mourvedre:

 

1 Saury, 2 neutrals

 

For the Syrah:

 

Everything else.

 

How have I come up with these formulas? It's a combination of about 20% common sense and 80% winging it. The Grenache was originally meant to be my flagship, so it needs some oak. I don't want an oaky Mourvedre, as it's probably going to be a blender.

 

The syrah is where I can play around. I'm getting six tons, which by itself is almost 400 cases. I want to do 2 barrel fermentations, just to see. Barrel fermenting syrah is fairly unusual but not unheard of, and I've had barrel fermented pinot noirs that are terrific, so I can try an experiment. I may leave one of the barrels on its lees (the dead yeast cells) until bottling and rack the other just to see the difference there as well. I'm not sure if you're supposed to barrel ferment a red in new or old oak so I need to research that issue. I'm sure I'll find a variety of opinions on the subject.

 

The lees thing is usually used for a certain style of white wine (it's widely used in Alsace, where mostly whites are made) but I've seen it used for reds. There is a mad scientist winery in California called Scholium Project that does all kinds of things with lees - leaving the wines on the lees for a year, even aging them on lees from another red, etc. It's premature for me to try that, and it's not my winery so we'll be going more straightforward.

 

My original plan was to have the Grenache be my flagship wine. I think there is only one winery doing a 100% Grenache from the vineyard in Amador County. I ordered a bottle of their wine after I had made the deal for the grapes. It tasted fairly good, but in a very over the top style. The alcohol was over 15% and you could really feel the alcoholic heat. It did not in any remind me of an elegant southern Rhone wine. It reminded me of a big zinfandel you'd slug down at a barbecue.

 

So the strategy's changed. I'm now thinking a GSM blend - the classic Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre blend found in the Cotes du Rhone. The syrah vineyard from Solano County is technically in a cool climate so if it reins in the fruit bomb Grenache I could have something. My initial thinking is maybe a 50%-40%-10% blend, but it's all in the tasting (more than one industry person has assured me blending trials are the most fun part of the winemaking process)

 

There of course will be a syrah, maybe 2. If the barrel fermenting thing works out there might even been a reserve variant, for a few extra bucks. Will I blend in some of the other 2? Uhmmmm.

 

And then there's the mourvedre. Mourvedre in California is inconsistent as a primary grape and it's usually a blender in France as well. It makes a nice rose but since roses sell for less than reds, that's not interesting to me. I'm hoping it can stand on its own, as there aren't that many California mourvedres but it's all in the tasting. Repeat ad infinitum.

 

The depreciation of barrel stock is unbelievable: you go from $1100 to $125 to $30 to pretty much nothing in the span of 4 years.