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I grew up in the middle of the wood. My grandfather was a carpenter. He built our house himself. Outside my bedroom window was a sawmill, behind the house was the last wainwright's lumberyard, and a few steps away was the cooper's workshop. It has always been clear to me: houses are built by the carpenter, wheels by the wainwright and wines rest in wooden barrels. Is this still the case today? Or are they just remnants of a world that has long since disappeared?

The old craft of the cooper

For thirty years I have been living in a wooden house again, surrounded by ever more mighty trees. You could say wood is my favourite material, a piece of nature for me. Does this also apply to wood in wine or wine in wood? Or is it something completely different? Wood, reduced to a single function: as a flavour bringer or, even better, flavour enhancer. We call them tertiary aromas and by that we mean hints of vanilla, coconut, leather, bitter almonds, cloves... In my glass, as I write this column, I have a wine from the Bordelais, Reysson from the Haut-Médoc, accompanied by a tasting note: "Lots of oak, but also a lot of juicy tannin, flowery fruity barrique finish...". As early as the 18th century, the barrique - small wooden barrel according to ship's measurements - became established in Bordeaux, and from there it started its triumphal march through the world. Barrique suddenly became a sign of wine quality. Not because of its practical size (225 litres) and not because the wine is better matured here than in the old, large wooden barrel, the fuder, tonel, mud, butt and whatever they are all called.

Ageing of the wine in old% large wooden foudres at Château Nouvelles in the South of France

Barrique seems to have almost magical powers in winemaking. Powers that no one would want to do without. Everything goes to the wood, red wines, white wines, sweet wines, noble brandies... Or the wood goes to them. Barrique has become a synonym for those aromas that are added or intensified primarily by oak, also toasted oak. Meanwhile, the EU even allows those controversial oak chips, also called chips, as they have long been used in America and Australia. Reason: Market justice. And for a large majority of consumers it doesn't matter how the "wood notes" get into the wine, through old and new barriques, through Burgundy fûts (2,281 litres) or even through chips. The main thing is that a wine "tastes" of barrique.

This wood, this barrique, this oak in almost every wine gives me more and more trouble! I feel as if the same corset of aromas is put over every wine, no matter how different it may be. Leaning towards a smell and taste uniformity.

One of the most famous barrel cellars in Bordeaux - almost a cathedral: Château Lafite-Rothschild.

In a tasting note of a barrel sample of a Bordeaux wine I read: "Lots of wood, little wine - at least digestible." This is probably the shortest common denominator of the barrique phenomenon. For many wine drinkers, this is enough. They swear by their favourite terroir, their favourite grape varieties, certain cuvées, blends or assemblages. But then comes the fashionable roller: called oak. More refined winemakers try to differentiate: American or French oak, staves more or less singed over the fire, first, second or third growth, wood from forests in the region where the vines grow, chestnut wood or Hungarian oak.... Barriquing" has become the almost all-important art of the winemaker. Or is it "only" a craft?

Advertising Chinese wine - Chinese culture combined with French barriques

On my holiday by the sea, I took a stack of wine magazines with me, newer ones, old ones and really old ones that I had always wanted to read. I read them, for hours. One theme runs like a thread through all the tasting notes, terroir analyses, reports, characterisations of regions, winemakers: wood, and too much of it. In a discreet wine critic's formulation, it is then said: "Wood is used too generously, so that hardly any fruit is recognisable. Or in short: "A lot of wood, edgy tannin." Again and again the question is asked: "Does this have to be?" In the eighties, oak first became a topic in many countries (including Germany). An oak culture soon developed: whether white, whether red, whether sweet - barrique can do it. Like a fashion wave, ageing in small, preferably new wooden barrels spread in the nineties. Even in Bordeaux, where wood ageing has been practised for centuries anyway, the wood was elevated to a quality characteristic. This went so far that the famous Château Giscours used wood chips for its second wine in 1995 and promptly became involved in a scandal with considerable economic losses.

"Death on the Barricade" - drawing by Alfred Rethel% 1849

Above all, however, Saint-Émilion proficiently upgraded its merlot-accentuated wines with wood notes. What used to be part of the harmony of Bordeaux wines and was hardly noticed, stands out more and more: Wood. The wine critics note: "lots of oak, as always", "characterised by new oak", "strongly roughened by oak". Then, one or two years ago, the turnaround - fashion is fleeting, subject to the dictates of contemporary taste. The reassuring statement emerges: "The barrique fashion is slowly dying down and fading away here, too. Whereby the emphasis is on the term "slowly". In every tasting - no matter what wine region the wines come from - there is still one common denominator: the wood - sometimes used well, sometimes worse, sometimes atrociously. The much vaunted, endlessly quoted terroir is slain or discreetly withdraws. Even the most sworn wood lover has to admit: We are on the wrong track. And I hope barricades will gradually be erected. Barricades are - etymologically speaking - nothing other than barriques, which - filled with sand - have to serve as a protective defence.

Sincerely
Yours/Yours

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