Most of the world's great wines have spent a period of time ageing in oak casks.
The manufacture and use of barrels dates back to the Celtic culture in north-central Europe.
Originally, wine was stored in earthenware vessels. This is how it was done in Georgia and in all the areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea (Italy, southern Spain and France, Greece, Turkey and North Africa).
The Celts, however, made barrels which they used to transport and store beer, as vines were not cultivated in the Celtic area and therefore wine was not consumed.
With the expansion of the Roman Empire, the manufacture of barrels also became popular for wine.
With the expansion of the Roman Empire, the manufacture of barrels also became popular for wine.
The story of the idyll between wine and wood had just been born.
Oak wood is used for several reasons:
It is a very hard wood, which means that it can be transported and withstands knocks without breaking.
It has a very suitable pore for the slow oxidation that wine needs.
It has a large contribution of tannins and they are pleasant to the taste.
Its spicy aromas are not invasive and blend well with the wine (imagine a pine or fir tree).
It is a large and very common tree.
The major producers of cooperage timber are France and the United States, together with the Eastern European countries, which have a large number of forests.
The oak trees used must be between 80 and 300 years old and have been cared for generations for this purpose. A knot in a plank is very nice for a piece of furniture but not for making barrels as it would not be watertight and would leak wine.
After the production of the boards or staves, they have to be dried outdoors for a period of more than three years or 6-8 months in closed halls where the humidity is lowered and the temperature is increased so that they expel the resin they possess. Undoubtedly, weathering gives much better quality.
The boards are sawn to the required dimensions and placed inside the metal rings that will form the frame of the barrel.
This is the moment to apply heat to the centre of the future cask so that the boards or staves become flexible and can be bent with the help of winches and the various hoops can be hammered in.
The toasting produced by this heat will also influence the aromas and character of the wine it contains. In fact, they are roasted a la carte from light to medium or high toasting. (LT, MT, MT+ and HT) depending on the wine they will contain. These acronyms are engraved on the front of the barrels.
Finally, the lids are put on and the wine inlet and outlet holes are made.
The most common volume of barrels are the so-called Bordeaux barrels with 225 litres, although there are other very common formats (300 l, 500 l).
For wines of long ageing (20-40-60 years and even more) the casks are even bigger and in many cases of centenary age. Some of these types of casks could be the 600-litre sherry or Port Botas or the 1850-litre Fondillón.
The contribution of aromas, tannins and oxygenation of a barrel depends on innumerable factors: oak variety and origin, type of drying, number and thickness of the staves, toasting level, capacity of the oak and obviously the number of uses of the oak.
As a curiosity, ton has an Anglo-Saxon origin and takes its name from a large capacity barrel that contained 252 gallons or 2016 pounds of water.
