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Vintners search globally for oak with distinction

By Thomas P. Skeen
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

	THOMAS P. SKEEN / WALLA WALLA UNION-BULLETIN Gary Figgins, founder of Leonetti Cellar, stands next to an 800-gallon French oak cask amid rows of smaller barrels in the cellar of his Walla Walla winery. He uses the large vessel for preliminary aging of young merlot and the smaller barrels of American oak for final aging.
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There, locked inside the oak and awaiting the alchemy when wine and wood age, are flavors hinting at vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and coconut.

There's no one wood regimen, vintners say, just general guidelines and experience. They say it's akin to a chef preparing an entree, with the grape varietal the meat and the wood the spice.

One rule both vintners and barrel makers agree on is the quality of the wine depends upon the ingredients.

"If you want to make great wines, you've got to start with great grapes," says Raymond Willmers, an independent representative for Mendocino Cooperage in Northern California. "If you want to make good wine barrels, you've got to start with great wood."

Not just ordinary oak

To hear experts talk about what makes for great barrel oak is similar to listening to vintners talk about the climate, soil and sun angles of a great vineyard.

"Site is everything," says Leonetti Cellar founder Gary Figgins.

Barrel prices Wine barrels vary in price depending on their origin, wood grain, length of aging and toast level, or how long a barrel is toasted over a fire. General prices for a new 59-gallon barrel: American oak: $250-$300 French oak: $525-$600 Eastern European Oak: $390-$450 Hybrid French and American oak: $310-$360 Source: World Cooperage

His Walla Walla winery houses 600 barrels, 75 percent of which are made with American oak staves from a Pennsylvania mill. Figgins air-dries the wood outside his winery for three to six years before shipping them to a cooperage to shape into barrels. He chooses to cure his wood locally because the dry climate of southeast Washington offers less leaching of the flavors found in oak.

Figgins also has visited European forests to select wood for his French and Hungarian oak barrels.

The ideal that winemakers seek is tight-grained wood, which pound-for-pound packs more of the lactone components that impart the flavors and textures vintners desire.

Such wood comes from forests in colder climes or where soils are sparse in nutrients. The conditions stress the trees, slowing their growth and concentrating the components wine extracts when in contact with the wood.

Most American oak comes from the colder upper Midwest states of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, the higher elevations of the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and the poor soils of the warmer Ozark Mountains in Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee.

	THOMAS P. SKEEN / WALLA WALLA UNION-BULLETIN The tight grain in this unfinished American-oak wine-barrel stave is what is desired by winemakers in all oak species they use.

Cooperages also are exploring Oregon and Canadian forests for white oak, the North American variety best suited for barrels. In the forests of Central Europe, including France, two species have been cultivated for centuries: English oak and sessile oak.

In general, says Willmers, lactones are more predominant in American oak than they are in French oak. Yet that doesn't make one better than the other, just different. Of the 20,000 American oak barrels Mendocino makes each year, half are sold internationally and about 4,000 of those go to French wineries.

Finished with fire

It's those differences within oak species that vintners look for when choosing their wood and deciding what degree of "toast" they want. Toasting — ranging from light to heavy — is a process in which the cooper fires the inner surfaces of staves and barrel ends to control the level of tannins the wood will give the wine.

"Raw wood comes off pretty green and sawdusty in the wine, rather than the coconut and vanilla flavors" toasted wood introduces, says Stan Clarke, an instructor at Walla Walla Community College's wine education center.

While a few vintners stick to using only one kind of oak from a single growing region, most now opt for a wide variety.

Ron Coleman, co-owner and winemaker of Tamarack Cellars in Walla Walla, is among the latter. He makes cabernet sauvignon, merlot, syrah, blends of the red wines, and chardonnay.

	THOMAS P. SKEEN / WALLA WALLA UNION-BULLETIN Gary Figgins, founder of Leonetti Cellar, examines oak staves from a Pennsylvania mill that he air-dries outside for three to six years before a cooperage fashions them into wine barrels.

"The reason I use so many different barrels and different cooperages and wood from different forests is that a combination is always best," he says.

The percentages of wines in various barrel lots he decides to include in the final blend comes after sampling each for the characteristics each will lend. He says he ages his cabernet sauvignon in nothing but French oak barrels, about 65 percent of which are new and the remainder heading toward neutrality.

"I like what happens in French barrels when wine has been in them for a long time," Coleman says. "They get sweet at the end. French barrels give it up kind of slowly."

On the other hand, because he likes to bottle his merlot after about 14 months of aging, he favors the quick punch of American oak. "It has gorgeous vanilla flavors," Coleman says. "I think it matches merlot very well."

If he thinks the final blend needs more of what he calls the "brown spices — cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice — all those things that go into pumpkin pie," he turns to Hungarian oak.

"You get synergy when you use the right barrels," says Coleman. "I call it a layering of flavors. Typically one flavor is less interesting than a combination."

Thomas P. Skeen: 509-525-3300 or tskeen@ubnet.com

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