A tour of winery barrel halls is about as exciting as watching paint dry. And when winemakers tell you which brand of barrels they use, it doesn’t mean much to most of us non-winemaking mortals.
But suddenly it makes much more sense after sitting in on a barrel trial tasting session with Chris Carpenter, winemaker for Cardinale, La Jota and Lokoya in Napa.
We sat down in front of five dense 2009 Napa Cabernet Sauvignons from the sub-region of Mount Veeder, which is destined for the Lokoya brand. They were the same wine but had been put into different types of oak. They had been in barrel for the same length of time, the toast was the same on each barrel, and the age of the barrels was also the same – but the wines tasted dramatically different.
Carpenter explained, “Mt Veeder has big fruit and giant tannins so we need to fill in the middle. We try to do that in the winery but oak also helps.”
We each marked the wines on that basis with the coopers Bel Air and Taransaud coming out joint favourite. Other coopers’ barrels flattened the smell of the wine while others overpowered the fruit. It was interesting to see Carpenter and his assistant winemaker completely disagree on the Bernard-made barrel, showing wine is totally subjective even when you know what you’re doing.
However these barrel test results are specific to each wine so while our favourites for this wine were Taransaud and Bel Air, this test doesn’t apply to the other Cabernets or Merlots Carpenter makes.
It is also interesting to note that most of us were non-plussed with the World Cooperage Barrels. These barrels just overpowered the fruit, giving an unpleasant coffee, mocha and vinyl character to the wine. However, Lakoya’s parent company, Jackson Family Wines, is a partner in World Cooperage Barrels.
Carpenter added, “We are going to France this year to try to figure out why they are like this. Is it how they are cutting the staves in France or is it the cooper in Missouri? These barrels do work with out Merlot but not with our Cabernet.”
Inevitably, with consolidation one of the key trends in the wine industry at the moment, there is some pressure from accountants to use this oak, as it is up to 50% cheaper.
