What is the point of barrels?

Hi Steve,
Are you going to bury this concrete vat into the ground like the Georgians did?

Salute

Hi, Victor; It's a 477 gallon cylinder on legs. It weighs almost four tons, so it's almost as if it already IS buried in the ground. With that kind of thermal mass, I'm not likely to need any cooling technology during fermentation. There's a certain elegance to me in the idea that this hulking, stone-age beast of a container can bring forth wines that are fresh, vivacious and charming.

Hi, Victor; It's a 477 gallon cylinder on legs. It weighs almost four tons...

Steve, is this the same tanks that Williams & Selyem used to use on their old property on River Rd (circa late 1980-s-early 1990's)? They had 2 concrete monsters sitting in front of their building abck then.

Wouldn't it also be a bit safer if something were to go wrong to have the wine in one hundred 59-gallon oak barrels as opposed to ten 590 gallon tanks?

If you just have one and it misfires you are dead.

Wouldn't it also be a bit safer if something were to go wrong to have the wine in one hundred 59-gallon oak barrels as opposed to ten 590 gallon tanks?

Tom; without at all meaning to be flip, having the wine in 59 gallon oak barrels would be, for me, something going wrong. I don't expect everyone to agree with that, but the impact wood has on wine, especially in a small barrel, is what I'm eschewing.

[David M. Bueker]

Tom & Covert - you might want to give Steve a little credit for having some idea of what he is doing.

Throwing wine in oak barrels because they mitigate risk is a worse rationale than to impart oak flavorings IMO. It speaks of cowardice.

Ideally, wine should be stored in the largest vessel possible as long as you have enough wine to keep it filled to the “brim” at all times. Especially if your goal is not to have the “character” of the wine change from the beginning to the end of the vintage year, or you are looking for “uniform” consistency. In Tom’s case, where you have a lot of wine stored in 100-59 gal barrels or 10- 590 gal vats in reality what you have is 100 “different” wines to worry about or only 10 “different” wines to worry about.

BTW Steve nice article, it is a massive looking vessel, good luck with it!

Salute

In 2009 I will finally (after 20 years of wishing the possibility existed here for the small-scale vintner) vinify a wine in concrete, in a tank produced domestically, in Paso Robles.

Steve,
That is exciting news. Like yours, some of my favorite wines were raised in concrete, so I look forward to seeing what results you can tease out of the beast.

Mark Lipton

Tom & Covert - you might want to give Steve a little credit for having some idea of what he is doing.

David,

I don't know Steve at all and I have no idea if he makes wine. I was just commenting, in general. My comment was really just wondering if its safer to have the wine in many smaller containers than fewer larger.

Tom & Covert - you might want to give Steve a little credit for having some idea of what he is doing.

Throwing wine in oak barrels because they mitigate risk is a worse rationale than to impart oak flavorings IMO. It speaks of cowardice.

I give him credit, for sure; and respect his knowledge, of which I know not of. I had the picture of William Munny dry firing one of his two barrels from a reference in a Jesse Stone movie the evening before, and couldn't resist the nod to my hero.

David Hirsch mentioned at the Nantucket Wine Festival that he may experiment with a concrete fermenter. I liked his Chardonnay best of three from Sonoma Coast that we tasted because it had less oak influence (40% fermented in stainless steel and then neutral oak barrels.)