Our new barrel and its cooper
Our new barrel and its cooper
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
This is our new oak barrel, proudly hand-made by Alastair Simms, Wadworth Brewery's Master Cooper. It's a handsome piece. There are only four breweries left in the country that employ coopers. Most barrels are machine-made or else made of metal these days. Alastair learned his trade at Theakston's before moving south to Wadworth's, in Devizes, Wiltshire. As well as barrels for the brewery he makes whisky, cider and wine barrels to order and repairs and re-toasts old barrels. This is a 225 litre wine barrel made new from French sessile oak from the Allier forest. It's got a light toast, suitable for delicate English wine. That means the inside has been singed by fire, but only lightly. You can read more about the art of Wadworth coopering here.
We plan to mature some - well, 225 litres - of our 2010 vintage in it. As the barrel's new, the wine'll only be in it a fairly short time, or the oak flavour would be too strong. Ideally we'd have bought a second-hand white wine barrel, but we couldn't find one. They tend to get moved along into red wine, and once they've been used for red, they can't be used for white or the wine would discolour. But then, next year we'll have our own used barrel. Not sure yet if we'll blend the wine from our two varietals - need to try some combinations.
We dropped the barrel off at Bagborough winery for Steve Brooksbank, who makes our wine, to prepare it. It needs to be filled with water to swell the wood and make it tight. When it's ready, and the blending decision is taken, the wine will spend some quiet weeks in its posh new surroundings, slowly becoming, we hope, our 2010 premium wine. Some more photos here