Elevage, Oak & Alchemy

Update 20.6.2019(4.5.2019)billn

Adapted from my 2012 book, and updated following a visit to François Frères in March 2019 – all the images from that visit.

Elevage – it’s the term used by French winemakers to describe the wine-maturing steps taken from the end of their alcoholic fermentation – including the fermentation in the case of whites – up until finally bottling the wine. That French word is literally the same used to describe bringing up children – wine has always been quite important to the French!

The first choice for the winemaker is where to age their wine; in a stainless-steel, concrete or fibre-glass tank, in oak barrels or ‘foudres’ or any combination thereof. Whatever the winemakers’ choice of ‘container,’ elevage is not just about the wine sitting around until it is ‘ready’ and that’s because there is typically another fermentation stage to complete. After the alcoholic fermentation the taste of the wine can still be a little bright and seemingly acidic, but the conversion (by bacterial action) of the wine’s natural malic acid into carbon dioxide gas and the softer lactic acid is called the malolactic fermentation – referred to as the wine’s ‘malos.’ Malos can be stopped, or shortened by the addition of sulfur dioxide or by reducing the wine’s temperature – producers might choose to do this to add a little freshness to their wines – this kind of approach is becoming less rare as we have sequences of hotter vintages. The malos were potentially problematic in the 2018 vintage as a) there was very little malic acid, and b) because the malolactic fermentation often completed before the alcoholic fermentation – this complicates the wine from a (malolactic) bacterial perspective and could lead to either higher volatility or even brett – or both!

For wines – red or white – that are characterized by their youthful fruit, and typically drunk young, elevage is shorter and often happens in tank, older oak barrels or a mix of the two. A longer time in oak allows reactions, catalysed by oxygen, that alter all aspects of a wine; not just the aromas, flavours and texture of the wines, but also their longevity. But why oak?

The oak cask, known since the fifth century BC, was for so-many generations, considered a neutral container for wines to age in, be transported in or to be stored in – for the latter, often the bigger the better – but nobody really considered that oak brought more. New barrels were traditionally used in the elevage of less important wines – here some colouration of the wine’s basic characteristics was deemed less important. There is still an element of that today when you look at large producers such as Bouchard Père et Fils; because it is such a large cuvée, their Bourgogne Blanc uses the most new barrels (though perhaps only 5-10% of the wine sees new oak), soaking up the full flood of the young barrels’ flavours and aromas in their first year. The barrels are mainly used for the more important wines in their second year.

Aging in oak is today a pre-requisite step in the elevage of almost all the world’s important wines. We now understand its unique combination of properties; akin to a partly porous membrane, leaching minutely small quantities of oxygen and at the same time transporting chemicals from the wood itself into the wine, yet also allowing a tiny amount of evaporation – over months it slowly concentrates the wine in the barrel – that which is ‘lost’ is given the name ‘the Angel’s share.’

Although only the second largest global producer of oak barrels (after the US), France reigns supreme as the supplier of oak for maturing the wines of Burgundy. There are about fifteen million hectares of French forests, the largest supplier of oak being the government’s French Forestry Agency (ONF) who manages well over four million hectares. The public ownership and management of the forests makes sense when you must wait one hundred and fifty years to harvest a tree!

A standard 228 litre Burgundian barrel is far from a cheap option; twice the price of its American equivalent, a barrel could now cost you as much as eight hundred Euros – if it is only used for one vintage, that’s approaching three Euros per bottle – just for the oak! Demand for French oak continues to rise; half a million barrels currently account for over ten percent of the volume of wood harvested annually and closer to thirty percent by value.

Those old trees normally yield planks called staves, which are produced from close to the heart-wood of the trees by splitting the oak in the same direction as the grain of the wood – this is needed if the barrels are to be water-tight. The staves are then required to spend two to three years outdoors to season before they are ready to make barrels. Amongst other things, seasoning reduces the water-content of the wood so that the staves don’t shrink after barrel-making and cause leaks.

Part of the finishing process of barrel-making is the toasting; placing the barrel over fire, a light toasting can develop vanilla aromas and allows more oxygenation of the wine. A higher-temperature, longer toasting brings smoky aromas but also removes many tannin molecules – if you can avoid over-smokiness, the higher temperature approach is much closer to the concept of barrels as inert vessels. ‘Toasting’ can also be achieved by using only hot water or steam – this approach seems to increase the creamy flavours imparted to a wine. In practice a majority of winemakers will try to avoid the excesses of these two extremes by choosing a ‘medium toast.’

The generic concept of oak for most people is that it adds a little make-up to a wine; some smoke, toasted bread, coffee, brown sugar, cloves, cream, vanilla or coconut aromas and flavours, but barrel contact also affects a wine’s colour, its stability and how it feels in your mouth – its tannins. Colour is affected through the amount of toasting but also the quantity of wood tannins and the level of (micro) oxidation that the barrels endow. The barrel-aging of red wines helps bind the wine’s natural but unstable colour compounds, anthocyanins, with phenolic compounds including tannins – colours that are then more stable to pH, oxidation and the presence of sulfur dioxide – this process is often catalysed by oxygen. Fine-grained wood is perhaps counter-intuitively more porous than wood with a wider grain – this grain-size will influence the degree of oxidation during aging.

When tasting wine from barrel you can often feel the texture of the wood tannins (ellagitannins), but this a transition period for the wine as those same tannins are hydrolysed by the wine to smaller molecules with little sensorial impact.

Interestingly for white wines that are fermented and aged in their barrels, despite their longer relationship with the wood their oak flavour is lower than the same wine, fermented in tank and then only aged in barrels – clearly the presence of yeast lees and bacteria have an effect.

For winemakers the choices are many: wide-grained wood or fine-grained, high, medium or low toasting and wood from which region – Alliers or Vosges? Both are French of-course. In the end it is the relationship between the winemaker and the barrel-maker that often comes to the best approach. It is very common for winemakers to use a mixture of barrels, not just minimizing the sensorial impact of the oak by using a proportion of older barrels, but by mixing both suppliers and toast-levels, taking a little of everything that’s on offer.

For white wines in barrel, barrel-stirring (battonage) is commonly practiced; the aim of this stirring is to disperse the fine lees through the wine – the result is a fuller, fatter texture when you taste – most producers choose to do this only before the malolactic fermentation. Like most things this seems a good approach when used in moderation, where it is vigorously applied in order to speed up the elevage, the wines may have some early charm but I find that it quickly fades and that the wines are quite fragile.

Of-course nothing is static, even the bungs are now part of a wider discussion – should a biodynamic domaine really tolerate silicone bungs in the top of their barrels? One thing is for sure, the barrel is far from an inert container in which to age wine, its very form is perfectly adapted to a process of filling, topping up, storing and then finally releasing its contents.

Visiting François Frères:

Visited with Max Gigandet, 12 March 2019.

Tonnellerie Francois Frères
Village Bas
21190 Saint-Romain
Tel: +33 3 80 21 23 33
www.francoisfreres.com/fr

What is instantly impressive when visiting a cooperage, is how incredibly loud the workspace is – how hard the coopers work and, clearly, how fit they must be to work like this every day. Only 25 minutes in this ‘workspace’ left my head with a requirement for paracetamol!

François Frères export about 80% of the production – totalling about 30,000 barrels – from their site in St.Romain, and though it comes as no surprise that their main market is Burgundy, their storage of cut wood bears the names of famous domaines from all-over the world! Max explains “About 45% of our production goes to the US. We’ve been exporting to them since the 1970s and have actually grown together with many of these first customers. I think that we have a style of wood that fits the chardonnays and pinots and syrahs that are currently travelling the world. Of course it’s an alchemy – but we do have our own small micro-climate here, where we dry our wood in St.Romain – it’s not the same when you dry the wood in Beaune.

The company’s sales are lower in Chablis, and the Mâconnais too – “It’s for historical reasons” says Max, without elaborating, but they do have strong sales in the Côte Chalonnais, he points out. François Frères have developed their sales in other French regions too, such as the Languedoc and Bordeaux – but there’s always a link with the value of particular wines – cheap wines can’t support a lot of well-made (expensive!) barrels. Plenty of second-hand barrels end up in a multitude of markets though – it’s a mini-industry in itself. Champagne is growing but it’s foudres that are growing for the base wines – it’s similar in the Rhône too.

I ask an obvious question, given that I see wines as, typically, much less toasty than in the 1990s; “The barrels were more exuberant and toasty when I started here nearly 30 years ago, call it an evolution. More freshness, rather than toast is appreciated today, but they still provide the assistance that the wines need. Of-course, it’s the winemakers who make the wine, who decide the proportions of wood – we aid their work.” I ask if he sees a more general move to larger format barrels – “The proportion of larger formats grows by about 10% per year, but as a proportion of our total production, their volume is still very small, but we make a lot of 300 litre barrels – these are mainly for South Africa and Australian markets.

I ask about the various types of forests – et-cetera, but Max surprises me with his answer – of-course if a customer specifies that they want wood from, for instance Tronçais oak, then that’s what they will of-course get. But predominantly, we don’t work with geographic origins, we start with the capacity of barrel that the customer wants, followed by the length of drying – usually 2-4 years. Then behind that, there’s the notion of grain – très-fin, fin, or mis-fin – these are visual selections, the more fine, the more the exchange between the barrel, the wine, and the exterior of the barrel. Actually, the toast duration is always the same, it’s just the intensity of the fire that we use that changes.”

Despite my impression of the toasty aromas of wines in my glass, placing my nose in a freshly toasted barrel yields not smoke, but rather the smell of a bakery! But now I’m ready for my paracetamol!
 

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