High-quality grapes may be the key component to making fine wine, but prime oak barrels are another critical ingredient. Winemakers today trace their the characteristics of their barrels to the ...

Say the word "winery" and many people may envision a cool, dimly lit space filled with wooden barrels - each holding 800 gallons or so - giving the liquid inside time to mellow, develop complexity and ...

Fire crackles between the seasoned oak staves, fastened with steel hoops. As the sparks settle, the aromas float through the air — clove, cedar and vanilla. All the nonfruit characteristics you’ve ...

Ceramic clay used for wine fermentation, storage, and as a transport vessel is as old as ancient Greco/Roman culture. One of the Roman provinces, Gaul (France) at first eschewed using the ceramic ...

When B.C. vintners Christine Coletta and Steve Lornie decided to give friends the scoop about their radical plan to make wine entirely in concrete versus conventional steel vats or oak barrels, they ...

Winemakers: To oak or not to oak, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up oak to craft your wine to shake the spheres ...

Todd Haire and Bob Grim traveled to Nelson, New Zealand, in April 2019 to look for hops for Foam Brewers. But they came home jazzed up about a different crop: grapes. At a small winery adjacent to the ...

More than 2,000 years after the Romans made the switch from terracotta amphora to wooden barrels for shipping and storing wine, the Italians are once again at the forefront of wine technology. In an ...