Why use barrels in winemaking?
Ian Hickinbotham
Red wine barrels - Auscellardoor [©AusCellarDoor]
Until 1951, Australian winemakers really did not take barrels seriously. We did not age table wine in barrels and there was even an assertion like, ‘Why should we slavishly copy old European practice?’
But historically, barrels have been extremely important. Given that the ‘ancients’ had no metal tanks and certainly no plastic containers, a vessel made from wood was the only feasible container larger than a goatskin that could be used for transporting liquid! The wine amphorae could only safely be used in situ!
It was a barrel filled with rum that was used to transport Nelson’s body after his death at Trafalgar. Why it was empty upon arrival has never been properly explained!
From that same period, the story goes that the English, denied supply of Claret during the Napoleonic wars, turned to Portugal for wine. Soon, the Portuguese, had to use unseasoned wood to maintain supply of barrels for transporting their wines and they leaked. Their remedy was to pour molten lead into the barrels to fill the shrinkage gaps between the staves, so it was lead poisoning that afflicted the English gentlemen in their London clubs, not gout! (Oh – the afflictions wine is blamed for!)
In my early days as a cellar-hand, cotton ‘pulp’ was added to the wine in leaking barrels, and it ‘found its way’ to the orifice and indeed stopped the waste (which, however, was considerable by then).
The skill of the cooper was developed to an extremely high level. To make a container that does not leak from pieces of wood that must be shaped in more than two planes using hand tools is an extraordinary achievement. To forestall or minimise any leaking between the staves, they cleverly used dried reeds gathered from local river beds. The reeds conveniently soaked up any wine that might leak between the staves and swelled. Undoubtedly reeds have been used in this way for hundreds of years!
I used to know some of those coopers: they had partially lost their hearing through the constant hammering of wood (sometimes with their head inside the barrel) and the iron hoops that hold the staves together. Sophisticated machines have replaced their amazing skill, but were only introduced half a century ago.
Australian winemakers did use barrels for another purpose – the transporting of wine for our export trade of the time, under the umbrella of Empire Preference. Importantly, those barrels had to be waxed internally, so the wine could not touch the wood, because though it was known as Australian oak, it was really a eucalypt!
The wines of the time were mostly fortified red and some whites. The volume was considerable, but it has since been argued that the preferential treatment did us no favours in the long term. There were even stories of the barrels being tipped overboard once ships had departed our shores, but the winemakers still received the Government ‘bounty’ paid as incentive to export!
We only ventured into using oak barrels for ageing wine when Max Schubert copied Bordeaux winemaking methods for the initial 1951 making of his beloved Grange. This era was followed by Wolf Blass gaining ‘fame and fortune’ through three Jimmy Watson Trophies won with dry reds he stored in oak barrels made specially for him by Johns, the coopers in the Barossa Valley.
Ian Hickinbotham, one of the most innovative and influential oenologists in Australia over his 50 year career, is the author of Australian Plonky (see related review below).
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