For many years it seemed that coopers would soon join the legion of the extinct crafts.
The competition of modern containers made of glass, concrete, plastic and steel endangered or destroyed many traditional coopers. The turning point came with the renaissance of quality wine making and the resulting continuous need for high-quality barrels, which created a lucrative niche market.
Inventiveness, specialization and good service created new leaders.
The Lower Austrian cooperage Familie Schneckenleitner in Waidhofen a. d. Ybbs has been one of the most reliable partners of the Bründlmayer family for several decades. An excursion the the cooperage with the entire winery team was a great success.
We are old friends; the barrels for the old loess cellars of the winery are not delivered like the daily newspaper: strength and experience are required to transport the 300 to 2400 litre barrels into the 250 year-old cellar tubes without damage. All hands are required, and a regular exchange of experiences is always fruitful.
Before the barrels can be made, the trees have to grow. The oak trees of the Manhartsberg and the Ybbs valley, but also acacia and chestnut trees. The cool Waldviertel region causes the wood to grow slowly. The trees are felled in winter, when the amount of moisture in the wood is at a minimum. Afterwards, the wood must dry out for several years before it can be cleft, sawn into planks, toasted, bent and bound into barrels.
The “toasting” is necessary the wood can be bent into shape only under great heat. The fact that this process also transforms certain compounds in the wood which will then impart a particular taste to the wine is nothing but an agreeable by-product of this process, particularly for friends of the typical “barrique taste”. The most important role of the barrels, though, is the ripening of the wines: the natural structure of the wood allows the right amount of oxygen into the wine in order to assist in transforming valuable compounds such as tannins which are dissolved in the wine.
The rejuvenation of this craft also leads to a revival of regional identity, another positive aspect of the recent developments in wine growing. Different regions have different kinds of barrel, which in turn are suited for particular wine styles. After the barrique fashion of the 80s and 90s with its preference for small, highly-toasted barrels, the barrels of today are bigger in order to avoid disproportionate “woody” influences on the wine. It is also no longer thought necessary to use only French wood (Limousin, Troncais and Allier); the Schneckenleitner barrels for Bründlmayer’s famous Ried Lamm are made of local acacia wood, which will support but not overwhelm the character of highly-mature Grüner Veltliner reserve wines during the first and second fillings. |
