In 2009, we bought four new barrels: two American oak (one of which has French heads) and two Romanian oak. We are using a total of 24 barrels this vintage, so that puts us right in the middle of our target range, with 17% new oak. The different origins impart different characteristics to the wine. With American oak, the heads have to be toasted in addition to the staves, because untoasted American oak can have some very aggressive (and potentially negative) characters. Consequently, the toast tends to be more dominant than French oak barrels, which usually have toasted staves and untoasted heads. Our 2009 barrels include one American oak barrel with untoasted French heads to avoid excessive vanilla, caramel, and toast flavors in the finished wine.

Romanian oak is the same species as French oak. We have tried both Romanian and Hungarian and found that the Romanian produces a better structure in the final wines. We also like the fine aromatics.

Our wines spend 16 – 18 months in barrel. Since they go through two winters in barrel, the wines don’t need an additional cold stabilization to stabilize color and tartrates.

Right now, almost all of our barrels are full of wine. The 2008 vintage will remain in barrel until it is bottled in early January, which will free up those barrels for the 2010 harvest. We do keep a couple of empty barrels for racking the wines (the process of moving the wine from one barrel to another while leaving behind any sediment). Storing dry barrels is marginally more complicated than keeping them filled with wine.

Lighting the sulfur wick

First, as the barrel dries out, the staves shrink slightly, causing leaks. Dry barrels therefore need to be filled with water for a couple of hours before being filled with wine, to allow the staves to expand and thereby seal the leaks. Second, the cracks between the staves provide an ideal environment for mold and bacteria to grow, which, if allowed, would introduce off flavors into the wine. To prevent such contamination, we burn sulfur inside the dry barrel. A barrel that has just been emptied is first rinsed thoroughly and then left to dry out for a day or two. The sulfur wick (actually more of a tablet) is placed on a special bung and lit, and the bung is then inserted into the barrel. After about fifteen minutes, the bung is replaced with a normal bung, sealing the sulfur dioxide inside. Empty barrels need to be suflured once a month.

To move the wine, we hired a truck and loaded up empty barrels on barrel racks. We then filled the barrels on the truck, using nitrogen pressure (no pumps) to rack the wine out of the cellar and onto the truck. The full barrels were offloaded with a forklift at San Esteban. Our friends Craig and Eduardo came up from Santiago to help out.

Our other preparations for harvest include buying a new press. Ed has had the old press since before I knew him. He and Pat Henderson (now head winemaker at Kenwood Vineyard) used to make wine in their garage on Boyes Blvd in Sonoma. Pat shipped us the press when we started making Flaherty in 2004. Because it’s so small, it took several press loads to press out a bin , which made for a very long day. The new press will speed up the process and allow us to press more thoroughly. A disadvantage, however, is that the thing is really heavy, so we won’t be able to move it around the fermentation pad as needed. We therefore picked up a reconditioned pallet jack, which will allow us to move the bins to the press rather than vice versus. The kids had a great time using it to rearrange the bins. Finally, our new barrels arrived the same day we moved the wine to San Esteban. Craig Thornbury of Tonelería Magreñan delivered two american oak and two romanian oak barrels. All these additions should help smooth out the winemaking process.