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Ad Rates / Articles / Classified Ads / Editorial / Home / Links / Showtime   Rolling out the barrels in Prince Edward County    List Ray Yurkowski Next   Ontario business keeps rolling out the barrels   By Ray Yurkowski Despite lightning-speed advances in technology, winemakers, distillers and brewmasters still rely on an ancient invention that has seen almost no modification in 2,000 years: the wooden barrel.   Cooperage, the art of barrel making, is an ancient skill and the actual barrel making process remains firmly rooted in the past. Both the procedure and the tools have remained relatively unchanged. And, it seems, a closely guarded secret.   The Romans made a significant discovery around 250 AD. They found barrels to be the perfect container. They could be rolled up and down gangplanks and were sturdy enough to survive long sea voyages.   It wasn't long after - around 300 AD - when the Roman Empire extended to an outpost in England where they found that wine shipped from the continent tasted better in England than it did back in France. Ever since, maturing wine and spirits in wood has become a standard of excellence and consumers have come to equate quality with barrel aging.   Oak, the wood of choice in winemaking around the world, comes mainly from areas of central France and the United States where oak trees produce a tighter grain in the wood that holds liquids well.   But Ontario barrelmaker, Carriage House Cooperage (CHC), is about to change all that. Located in a 100-year-old gristmill in Wellington, Ontario, the heart of Prince Edward County wine country, partners Marla Cameron and Pete Bradford are turning industry heads by offering the only barrels manufactured in Canada using local wood.   Currently, barrels built in a British Columbia cooperage are made of imported wood and a company in Hamilton ships local wood to the U.S. for fabrication to be sold back in Ontario, but Carriage House buys trees from local farmers, has them cut in a local sawmill and constructs the finished product.   It's a win-win situation says Cameron. As part of a tour for the annual Trenton Woodlot Conference, an event for local farmers, they found a ready resource.   "They have white oak, but there isn't a market for it," she said. Now there is, and it's right here in the neighbourhood.   It took a while to get into the trade says Bradford. A skilled cabinetmaker for more than 25 years, he researched for more than a decade and sent handwritten letters worldwide trying to find someone to teach him the skills.   Then, he happened across a newspaper account detailing two Missouri guys who had inherited a company that made staves, the wooden slats that go into making a barrel - but the men didn't know how to put one together.   One of the American beneficiaries actually had to go to Japan and work on saki barrels to learn the trade. Bradford wrote a letter to the Americans, got a phone call on his birthday and made the trip to Higbee, Missouri to meet his mentor and become a tradesman.   “It’s something we can never, ever repay,” says Bradford. “We’ve asked numerous times and the only thing he ever comes back with is ‘just do it right.’”   In their first year, CHC produced seven barrels. Since then, production has ballooned, rolling out 68 in 2008 and last year about 120, all at the hands of Cameron and Bradford.   It’s been a reciprocal relationship with the area winemakers says Cameron.   “We’ve grown with them and learned from them, as well as them learning from us,” she said.   Late last year, Black Prince Winery uncorked the first-ever vintage aged in barrels from Prince Edward County oak. The milestone wine was crafted from 100 per cent county-grown Chardonnay grapes and aged in county-grown white oak barrels made at CHC.   “It’s an incredible marketing tool,” says Bradford. “It works for us and it works for them.”   Now, they’re taking the concept a step further.   “If a winery has an oak stand on their property, we’ll have the tree taken out, aged, and make the barrels out of their tree,” says Cameron.   Rosehall Run Vineyards, the first to take them up on the offer, will have homegrown barrels made at CHC next year. Suitable trees are about 120 years old. Only two to four 60-gallon barrels can be made from a single oak, as only about 30 per cent of the tree is usable. The oak is aged for a minimum of two years before being cut into usable parts.   CHC has enough wood on hand to make 200 barrels this year and 300 in 2011.   CHC had a phone call recently from a local farmer who was felling two white oak trees. When he went to take a look, Bradford found one tree to be five feet across and more than 250 years old, enough to make 15 barrels … maybe more. And, thanks to a chance conversation, a local winery bought the whole tree.   “The winery is doing something that nobody has done or can do worldwide,” says Bradford. “They’re buying 15 barrels and they’re all identical. At 300 litres a barrel, it’ll be a huge vintage."   “That’s the really cool thing about what we’re doing, they’re all firsts."   Incredibly, even the current recessionary times might lend a hand in helping build their business.   When they approached their bankers to try to move their business plans forward, they wondered, “is this a really bad idea right now?”   “(The bankers) said it wasn't, because during the last recession wine sales increased,” said Cameron. Photo 1 - Tools of the trade haven't changed much   Photo 2 - Marla Cameron, a cooper who loves her work   Photo 3 - Completed barrels await delivery   Return to top of page   This Is Livin' Publishing © 2010 581 8th Line West, RR1 Hastings, ON, K0L 1Y0 Phone/Fax: 705-696-1833   webmaster