New Barrel

Since the first barrel has been taken out of service, I needed a replacement. I decided on another refurbished French oak barrel. This one is a 30 gal. medium toast from Barrel Builders in CA. It was advertised as a 2 yr. old barrel that was used for red wine. Their refurb process is similar to the recoop process except for the fact that they remove old interior wood using a router rather than planing. Also, they retoast using an oak fire, whereas recoop uses a gas burner. The staves seem to be slightly thicker that the recoop barrel. That might be a good thing. The cost was $285.00 plus $22.48 shipping equals $307.48 total.

Retirement

We found some scum on the surface of the Merlot in the Barrel. This is the third time we've had problems with this barrel. The first time we gave it a good cleaning and put it back to work, but the next year it had problems again. Then we gave it a double dose of the extra-caustic barrel cleaner and thought that would be the cure. Nope. A few months laterthe scum reappears, this time on the Merlot blend. I think it is time to put this barrel to use making ribs in the smoker..

eBay Barrel

I spotteed this as an eBay item. This was way back in the second year of winemaking. The first year was a small batch of Pinot that Lee and I put together. It turned out not great, but good enough to inspire us to try again, so I went on the hunt for a barrel and found this. It is "re-cooped" French oak and holds about 23 gallons. I called the seller for information and found that he is a barrel remanufacturing company in California wine country. He takes used barrels and shaves off 1/4 inch (or more) of the interior wood and then re-toasts it. He said that it then has most all qualities of a new barrel. The eBay sale was cheap advertising for him. I got it for just under $200.

Initial Blog

Initial blog for Ray's first 22G French Barrel.