I feel you.
Guess oak barrel aging will get a cost advantage over steel barrels … for a bit.
Umm, whole lotta calculatin’ goin’ on there.
Back ~3 decades, a Chateau owner / friend in Bordeaux had a contract with Moet-Hennessey to age some of his wines in different barrels for them to taste. I think there were 12 different barrels each from France and the U.S. (don’t know why no other countries were included). One American oak barrel stood out, made by a French cooper in California.
When my friend arranged a trip to the U.S., he asked to meet the owner of the forest where the oak was grown and to walk through it. I helped set it up. The forest was in southeastern Minnesota. The cooper told the forester I would call. The guy was flabbergasted. He’d been selling oak to the cooper for many years, the cooper had never visited, nobody had ever visited, nobody had asked.
My friend Pierre Saturny flew into Milwaukee, drove 3 hours to La Crosse WI. He turned in the car, The forester picked him up, took him to the forest, then took him home and announced that in his honor they were recreating an American Thanksgiving dinner (this was probably in April). They were house guests. The next morning, they were treated to a lumberjack’s breakfast (Pierre, about 6’6" and 275 told me he couldn’t eat it all!) and driven to Minneapolis to catch a flight to California.
I would think that even with tariffs on steel, barrels will still be cheaper than even entry-level American oak, but it’s quite the question and far from easy to do the calculations… and without getting into politics it is obvious tariffs can change quickly.
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Is there a Godwin’s Law for Orwell comparisons too?
Yes, more of a joke that steel tariffs have gone up but the Europe tariffs are mostly on pause for now. As you say by the time a tank/barrel is ordered and shipped things probably will be different.
What did he think of the forest? Was he curious about the way the oaks were growing or just curious?
He was impressed, it wasn’t first growth, but old. He was most interested in the age of the trees that the forester cut for barrel wood. I never got many of the details.
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Well, Federal Circuit stayed the ruling barring the various tariffs. https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/25-1812.ORDER.6-10-2025_2518126102025.pdf
Oral argument planned for July 31. Argument en banc (all judges on court), which is pretty rare for initial appeal hearing.
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