Barrels. Through the French forests looking for better expression of a wine.
As we enter the forest our perspective changes and the size of the oak trees becomes even more impressive. The base of the larger trees is stuck to earth with a base that two-men couldn’t hold, they are close to 200 years old and they repeat themselves over and over through the horizon in an imposing setting that defines the forest. We are in Nevers, the centre of France, where we find eight thousand hectares of this extraordinary wealth and these trees, whose better examples, guarantee what brought us here today: the oak barrels where we age our wines.
Keeping and ageing wine in wood is an ancestral and common method, but a few years ago, when Anselmo Mendes was starting his experimentation process of selecting new solutions for fermentation and ageing of his wines, this matter gained a new complexity. I was privileged to work with him from the moment I started, learned a lot, and among so many experiences I lived through, one of them was the discovery of these oaks that, today, guarantee the thing we look for the most: the authenticity and balance of the wines.
Well, Anselmo Mendes heard about some new possibilities with barrels from Berthomieu and Ermitage cooperages, from France and manufactured within the Charlois Groupe, based here in Nevers. These cooperages offer the possibility of choosing barrels that, among other options, allowed not only the change in dimensions or toast already known but equally choosing the size of the oak pores or the kind of wood seasoning performed – yes, these staves are seasoned in open air, under rain, snow and sun, in parks free of pollution, where they can bleach, dry and loose tannins.
Thus, with Anselmo, from 2004 on, we launched a study that ended up answering a very simple question: which oak wood help us better express the authenticity and the quality of a wine? We successively tried different vintages of Alvarinho, Arinto, Alicante Bouschet and Touriga Nacional in Berthomieu and Ermitage barrels together with barrels from another six cooperages. Along the ageing period, we tasted and took technical notes, analysed oak intensity, aromatic charge, structure, complexity, everything! We got a group of other winemakers together and included them in the discussion, and, in the end, we reached the conclusion of which barrels were best for each wine. Finally, we would not only preferably choose these two cooperages (Berthomieu and Ermitage), but we also got to know we wanted oak from a specific forest for each wine within these brands. In the end, we were working towards a new concept: the oak terroir.
Let’s look at the example of terroir forest where we are, in Nevers, the Bertranges forest. These oak trees grow on soft hills with rich and humid soils. The trees are tall and straight, the wood grain is regular and tight. With wine contact, this oak offers less structure allowing the preservation of natural freshness. It’s the oak Anselmo Mendes uses, for example, in his mythic Parcela Única wine. It is also the oak we chose for ageing the Adega Mãe Terroir, the top range of Adega Mãe.
The French producers have an interesting approach to oak. A lot of them keep secret the type of oak they use in their wines. It is a secret because, in a way, this is a differentiating step among wines and wine trade. And this is understandable. Do you use French oak barrels? What size? What kind of toast? What’s the oak origin? That oak is more or less porous? Were they new or used? And how many months have you kept the wine in them? The possibilities are almost infinite. Mix all these possibilities the number of times you want, and with the same variety, you always get different wines. There isn’t a right or wrong choice, what there is, is the discovery of the desired wine profile. And that’s the result of your own experience.
Since it has taken me five paragraphs to explain how I got in the middle of the forest, it is also important to explain how the oaks are transformed into barrels. In the end, we need to allow time. 200 years may pass between the moment an oak is planted and the day we have the chance to taste a wine that aged in its wood. Oak trees are only taken down when it reaches maturity, and that is close to 200 years. The trees to take down are identified by the ONF – Office National des Fôrets, a French government organization that takes care of the forest exploration and manages the 11million hectares of public forest, assuring its permanent renovation.
After tree identification, it’s for the cooperages to evaluate the trees, this means, check if they gather the necessary quality to be transformed into barrels, followed to the buying process in an action – one offer may round 2000 euros. After the trees are taken down, the oak trunks are cut in a specific dimension, that allows the needed size for the future barrel construction. In the “merrandiers”, these tree trunks are cut vertically into slices (these slices are more natural and respect the veins of the wood keeping the impermeability of the wood) and are transformed into staves, that in a first stage will be kept in the exterior parks, mentioned before, exposed to all weather conditions. Only after the ageing is finished do they follow to the cooperages, where all the spectacular manual process of building a barrel takes place. A visit to the cooperages is worth just for that, witnessing this art only achieved by true specialists and craftsmen.
In the case of Berthomieu and Ermitage, the barrels used in some of the best wine regions of the world are from here, Portugal included. But you also get much more than that. We get the example of the use and sustainability of this natural resource: the forest. In here wealth is generated for many centuries, a tree illegally taken down is taken into judicial courts and very rarely do you have a fire here.
That’s it! Now that the Summer is approaching this is an example to follow!
