I don’t know the details, but supposedly some producers of tanks, including Nico Velo in Italy, have started using a different formulation of concrete with little or no lime and silica and treat the walls to make them less porous (to avoid the use of epoxy linings). I think there are also treatments to help keep them more sanitary between uses. Not as if barrels used for aging are perfect in that regard, either.
-Al
Definitely not. However, it’s easier to replace a barrel costing $500-1500 than a Nomblot egg ($4000-20000) or a huge concrete tank built into the winery. Many wineries that use aged barrels do not reuse a barrel that has yielded a bretty wine, but others try their darnest to clean their barrel in the hopes of getting rid of all unwanted microbes.
For example at Produttori del Barbaresco they said they recondition their bottis when needed by contacting a cooper who removes a layer of the barrel’s inner surface, effectively turning it into a new botti again. This can be done once or twice - and it’s much faster and more affordable than putting in a request for a new cask.
Yes, most of the wineries I know get rid of a barrel that’s had brett or other nasty microbe introduced. Work hard at keeping barrels clean, but get rid of them at the first sign of trouble.
We had a couple of concrete tanks the last two or three years at the winery where I helped out (Harrington in San Francisco). They were one ton capacity cubes, unlined, and only used for whites (and one Ramato Pinot Gris). Definitely a pain to empty and clean them. We didn’t have any microbial issues, but also hadn’t used them for long before the winemaker decided to retire.
-Al
Cement (in Spanish “cemento”) is the dry powder made up of burnt limestone and clay with some gypsum added. If you mix it with water and it hardens, it’s still cement, just hardened. It tends to be crumbly if it has any unsmoothed surface.
Concrete (in Spanish “hormigón” or “concreto”) is a mixture of sand, gravel and cement that hardens into a stone-like very hard/strong composite.
Poured concrete (in Spanish “concreto armado”) is concrete usually poured around a rebar structure and is usually the strongest version.
The word cement is a synonym for glue in English. Epoxy is also a type of adhesive, like a resin.
Colloquially cement is sometimes used to mean concrete but it’s technically not the same.