La Botte
Dateline: 04/25/97
The subject of this week's column is wood, and specifically barrels. According to Piemonte's Department of Agriculture, the Celts of Cisalpine Gaul (the area north of the Apennines and south of the Alps, now Lombardy, Piemonte and the Veneto) were the first to use barrels for wine transport and storage, because they were easier to manage than the amphorae the Romans and Greeks used (living in woodlands where there was a ready supply of raw materials for barrel-making obviously had an influence here). Times have changed, and now most barrels have moved out of the transport sector and into the cellars. Curiously enough, the traditional Italian container is not the barrel, but something much larger: The botte.
Botti are huge oak casks, with capacities of thousands if not tens-of-thousands of liters. The wine (talking about reds here), following its fermentation, sits in the botte, maturing slowly as oxygen is exchanged from the air to the wine through the fibers of the wood. Once the winemaker decides that the wine is ready (a few months in the case of a wine to be drunk young, or as long as 3-4 years in great reds such as Barolo or Brunello) it is bottled, bottle-aged, and sold.
The immense size of the botte has both positive and negative consequences. Since the volume of wine in the barrel is large relative to the surface area of the inside of the barrel, the wood doesn't have much influence on the wine. In a light, fruity wine this is positive, because the wine emerges with its fruitiness intact both in the bouquet and on the palate. On the other hand, with a more important wine, one expects something more: more complexity, more structure, more roundness, and so on -- things that come in part from the wood. Leaving the wine longer in the botte will work in good or great years (assuming that the botte is new -- after a few years the wood is exhausted), but may not be sufficient in normal or off years. Also, excessive time in a botte can dry out the wine, removing the fresh fruit flavors.
A solution to this problem came from the other side of the Alps: The barrique, or 60 gallon barrel. Though the French have been using them for centuries, Italian producers suddenly discovered them in the 1960s -- in Tuscany, where Antinori was developing Tignanello with the intent of appealing to international tastes. Because barriques are small the surface area of the inside of the barrels is large relative to the volume of wine they contain, and they consequently have a profound influence on the wine. First of all, they stabilize the color of the wine, which tends to be a deeper, darker red. They also have a tremendous influence on the bouquet, adding notes of spice and vanilla (the latter from the toasting of the barrels), and other complexities as well. Finally, they influence the wine on the palate, adding nicely rounded tannins that make it fuller, adding complexity to the texture, and affecting the taste and finish.
The other producers were very impressed by Antinori's results (with Tignanello, can you blame them?), and in the space of a few years barriques swept through Tuscan wineries (one producer even labeled one of his wines "Barriques" to underscore his use of them). Unfortunately, the barrique is in the final analysis a tool, like any other, and must be used correctly to produce satisfactory results. Many of the producers overdid it with their first attempts, making tremendously oaky wines that smelled and tasted more of the insides of the barrels than anything else. Others saw the barrique as a sort of magic device capable of transforming rinsewater into the milk of paradise. This is not the case; as Castello di Querceto's Alessandro François observed more than a decade ago, "a bad wine put in a barrique comes out just as bad."
From Tuscany, the use of barriques has spread throughout the rest of Italy. Initially, the tasting commissions of the various DOCs had mixed reactions to the barriqued wines -- none smelled or tasted like the wines from botti that the tasters were used to. However, the marketplace reacted quite favorably to the new wines, and by now almost all the commissions allow the use of barriques (though Montepulciano's regulations still specify "small botti" and some traditionalists frown at them). Indeed, their use has become so common that some wineries are slowly phasing out the huge botti, which are also extremely expensive to make. Not that everything is going into barriques -- the tonneau, which contains 6-700 liters (2.5 barriques) has also become popular. The wood has less influence on the wine, but still gives it added complexity and depth. It is, one might say, the botte piccola, (small botte) which, according to an Italian proverb, "gives good wine."
A few closing observations about barriques:
- If the winemaker is working with a grape that is low on tannins, for
example Barbera, the wood of the barrique can contribute greatly to the
wine's structure and complexity, helping a starlet develop into a star.
- Among Barolo producers of the new school, who ferment their musts at
high temperatures for short periods, the color is extracted from the
grapes by heat rather than alcohol, and precipitates out unless it is
stabilized by interactions with the wood of the barriques. I talked with
one producer who buys more than 2,000 new barriques per year (in all he
has about 3000).
- Because barriques interact intensely with their contents, they give
up their souls to their wines within the space of about three years,
after which they have to be replaced. As you might guess, using
barriques puts a significant strain on a winery's budget.
- Most barriques are from France, though a few come from Slovenia. The
wood from Slovenia is excellent, though the workmanship is not, so some
wineries purchase from Italian coopers who import their raw materials
from the East (most botti are also made from Slovenian oak). A few
producers are also experimenting with American barrels.
- Tasting from a barrique (or barrel of any size, for that matter) is not a good way of judging the wine, unless you have a great deal of experience. This is because the wine is not yet finished, and won't be until it has gone into the reducing environment of the sealed bottle where its nuances and complexities can develop (remember, one of the barrel's major functions is to allow oxygen to reach the wine). This is also why producers bottle age their better wines for several months, or as long as they can afford to, before they sell them.
Good food & Drink,
Kyle Phillips
