My interest in wood

Some fiftee years ago, the French National Forest Service asked me to do something a bit unusual – they asked me to conduct a parallel tasting of a red wine and a white wine. The two wines were wines from Burgundy. The red came from the Chalons slopes – to be more specific it came from Mercurey, from the Champ Martin premier cru terroir, from the Juillot estate. The white wine was a Puligny Montrachet Village premier Cru le clos du Cailleret from the Chartron Trébuchet winemakers.

The purpose of the tasting I was conducting was to analyze the influence from the different woods, from the different origins and varieties of the woods, and from the micro-porosity of the woods on the aromas and tastes of the wine, and on the maturing of the wine, for a given parcel. For me, this tasting was a fascinating revelation on the role that wood could play on wine – for better or for worse… Never before had I so clearly seen the influence that a given type of wood could have on understanding the wine.

The selected wood all came from the same coopoer - François  Frères – in Saint Romain. The wood came from many different places: Citeaux, the Vosges mountains, Bertranges, Tronçais, the Caucasus mountains, Slovenia and the state of Missouri. The wood came from “haute futaie” timber forests and from taillis sous futaie coppice with standards, and the microporosity was different. The tests involved sessile oak and white oak. The results exceeded my expectations, and from that day on, my awareness of wood and on ageing wine in general intensified.

I knew of course that wine’s reactions arose from several parameters including terroir, climate, soil, grape varieties and of course the winemaker’s ability to transcend his or her terroir … and to this I could now add the choice of the wood and the ageing. The impact of the winemaker’s choice of wood was a revelation for me. Selecting the right wood, the right container and the right maturing time could enhance the influence of the terroir. Erroneous choices could, on the other hand, cancel out the influence of the terroir .

To be continued...