As with anything else, half of it is tradition and the other half is experimentation. I know some producers use e.g. acacia with the same intent as they would a concrete egg or an amphora.
What is the effect of using redwood as a fermentation vessel? Does it produce any different results or flavors in the wine than fermenting in oak or stainless steel?
article on wikipedia is good and complete;
Acacia imparts a yellow tint to the wine
Redwood is too rigid to bend into the smaller barrel shapes and imparts an unpleasant flavor
Brazilian mahogany was sometimes used in Portugal.
The idea that redwood imparts flavor seems strange since it’s used for the water tank on top of virtually every New York apartment building.
wine is not water?
In California, redwood has been used to make large tanks, but not small (50 gal) barrels because that wood is hard to bend. Redwood is a conifer and is high in extractable phenols. About 10% to 15% of the virgin heartwood is hot water extractable. The flavor imparted by this wood is not very pleasant; therefore, the wine is usually not stored in redwood tanks for a long period.
The Monitor and Merrimack.
State forests all over Europe became obsolete and lots of suddenly cheap oak went looking for new uses. Lots of other woods had been used but oak became very cheap and with some of its superior features quickly dominated the market.
In a word, Chris…$$$. Redwood was used in Calif because it was easily available, far cheaper than oak, and before stainless steel.
Seasoned redwood is (supposedly) neutral in flavor.
Tom
Thanks, Bob…though I didn’t understand all that much in the article.
Oak is actually considered fairly porous (it’s one of the ring-porous woods); cherry is pretty much at the opposite end of the pore size range, but it can be quite aromatic. As Leonard noted, the pores in white oak are interrupted by tyloses, which make for water-tight barrels.
In Brasil they use a lot of Amazonia woods like imburana, cedar, freijó, balsa and jequitibá plus American and / or French oak to age Cachaça, resulting in a lot of different textures and flavors.
Tyloses! Thanks Frank. I am a forester and had forgotten that term.
Chestnut was usually coated with oparaffin on the inside. Otherwise, wine aged in chestnut is very astringent. Acacia is porous and often not profitable for the cooperage. It’s a novelty.
Another consideration: what if peiople decided that wine made in cherry wood was the greatest?? Where are the cherrry forests?? They are called orchards!!
Once you eliminate the non-porous hardwoods, white oak is one the species available on a regular basis.
And Chianti, I do believe, IIRC.
JD
Cherry is a native hardwood over much of the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. and can grow to a fairly large size; as far as I know it’s not as common on the ground as oak, and has certainly been aggressively harvested in recent decades, so supply would be a problem. Orchard wood, on the other hand, is generally way too small for any such use as barrels.
It’s my understanding that not all “cherry” trees grow edible cherries…are the ones used for lumber a different species/genus?
Black cherry trees, common in North America, yield both edible fruit and good lumber for furniture: Prunus serotina - Wikipedia
The cherry barrels would not have been have made from the wood of the cultivated cherry (Prunus avium), as their trunks are too short and gnarly to yield staves. They would have been made from “wild” or black cherry (Prunus serotina) trees. At higher elevations in the mountains of West Virginia and Pennsylvania there are stands of Prunus serotina that yield trunks that are sufficiently long and straight to provide lumber.
Cherry is my favorite furniture wood and there’s no problem finding lumber bigger than any barrique stave. I have a modern cherry bed frame and a cherry dining room table, plus an antique cherry cabinet, which has seven-foot-long panels.
What a great thread. Very informative.