This is big. And we mean big. As many of you have seen, our Barrel Room is filled from top to bottom with American and French oak barrels where our red wines and Chardonnay sit quietly and age until they are ready to bottle. Recently, we purchased three casks to join them…well, more like tower over them! In the photo above, the top cask is made of French and Slovenian oak and holds 2,666 bottles worth of wine. For comparisons sake, a regular sized barrel holds about 275 bottles worth. The bottom left cask is French oak and the bottom right is Slovenian oak; they each hold 4,000 bottles worth of wine.
Why didn’t we just buy a bunch of regular sized barrels? In a cask, wine ages more slowly and extracts less oak, giving the wine roundness while maintaining the fruit characteristics. We can’t say exactly what the wines we age in these casks will taste like, but we are absolutely looking forward to the results. Aging our wines in these will enable us to create blending components for our Super T, Meritage and Angry Wife wines. Pretty cool, huh?
To start, we’ll be putting a 2012 Sangiovese in the French cask, and 2012 Cabernet Franc in both the Slovenian and Slovenian-French casks.
Come on out and take a look at our big additions by taking a winery tour. We think you’ll be amazed at the actual size when you see them in person.
Stay tuned for more updates on our Barrel Room as we refresh the winery in honor of our 10th Anniversary!
Cheers,
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