I am not too well versed in the economic history of German winemaking, so I’m not sure what sort of vessels those wines were sold in before selling wine in bottles became widespread in the 19th century. I would guess they were racked out of fuder into barrels for transport. As for Piemonte, we are not really talking about a “long tradition of winemaking”, as it was only in the 19th century that they figured out how to make dry wines! But there, the wines were sold in casks and demi-johns before bottling became widespread. In the Loire, wines were also sold in barrel. In at least the case of the Beaujolais, foudres are quite a recent phenomenon, introduced in the early 20th century when the Alsace brewing industry modernized and got rid of lots of wooden foudres; I am not sure exactly how far they go back in the Loire or the Rhône. In Châteauneuf, Henri Bonneau, about as good a guide to what people might have been doing 100 years ago as any, used predominantly 60 gallon barrels.
If you think about it, unless you are going to bottle the wine at the estate, you need to either make it in, or transfer it into, some sort of portable vessel; and for most of history, going way back, that vessel has been a barrel.
But Brad’s original post asked about the origins of smokiness. He wasn’t satisfied with just the descriptor. So I don’t think we can complain if the discussion turned to chemistry!
But were they new barrels? After all, in most parts of France the production is only a fraction of what it used to be and I doubt every corner of the country had a cooper to support all the barrel needs. Most likely there were spare barrels lying around here and there, and those were used to transport wine from one place to another. I doubt people had much understanding of hygiene back then (some producers don’t seem to understand it even today) so I guess it didn’t matter whether the barrel was new or used, clean or funky, if it wasn’t outright rancid.
So while wine were transported from one place to another in barrels, I still doubt it was complete new-oak-orium back then. I remember some sources even saying that in the 19th century Bordeaux simple plonk was used to season new oak barrels before they were used to age the Grand Vin in order to keep it becoming too marred with woody flavors.
On the contrary, most villages in Burgundy had multiple coopers and it’s not uncommon to encounter domaines which have their origins in a cooper-turned-winemaker, e.g. Roty in Gevrey-Chambertin. Bordeaux château and Champagne houses had their own in-house coopers. I don’t know what your sources are, but the English market used to request new Baltic oak barrels and that was what was used at the first growths in the 19th and into the 20th century, we good into that in a thread with Jeff Leve a while back, where I provided some references, if you want to go into that.
Understanding of hygiene was obviously not scientifically grounded until Pasteur, but I think it would be a mistake to assume that people kept on making the same mistake over and over again. Sulfur matches were used from the 17th century, and early 19th-century texts on winemaking e.g. Chaptal are very particular about sanitation. So I think the notion that people were until recently just knocking back vinegar, not knowing any better, is likely mistaken. I am sure barrels were indeed reused within the region, but transporting empty barrels back to e.g. Burgundy overland from overseas markets is not something that was practical, and shipping going to and from Bordeaux had more valuable cargo to carry than recycled barrels.
Yes I remember that one and, if memory serves, I myself have commented in some older threads how in the 19th century oak from the Baltics and Hungary/eastern Europe were preferred over French oak, which was considered inferior in quality due to its quite dominant woody flavors that could overpower a wine easily (although I didn’t remember anything about requests from the English market - if you have some references or a quick link to that thread, I’d be happy to read it again!)
And yes, definitely many large châteaux / domaines had their own coopers, but I doubt smaller farmers had similar access to new barrels. But then again, I guess the wines made by these smaller family domaines were never exported but instead consumed locally, so I can see your point.
Understanding of hygiene was obviously not scientifically grounded until Pasteur, but I think it would be a mistake to assume that people kept on making the same mistake over and over again. Sulfur matches were used from the 17th century, and early 19th-century texts on winemaking e.g. Chaptal are very particular about sanitation. So I think the notion that people were until recently just knocking back vinegar, not knowing any better, is likely mistaken. I am sure barrels were indeed reused within the region, but transporting empty barrels back to e.g. Burgundy overland from overseas markets is not something that was practical, and shipping going to and from Bordeaux had more valuable cargo to carry than recycled barrels.
Definitely didn’t want to imply that people were drinking vinegary swill back then! My point was that before any understanding of microbiology and related hygiene, things must’ve been quite different back then. Nevertheless, from what I’ve understood, burning sulfur wicks is a much older phenomenon, earliest literary mentions going back to 15th century or so and the probably the process being even much older than that.
Don’t know anything about how the wine trade was in the 17th and 18th century, but I could imagine the ships didn’t leave England empty just to pick up full barrels from Bordeaux? I can imagine they would’ve shipped something valuable, of which at least a part could’ve been transported in barrels?
The ships carried ballast. Some of the cobblestones in St. Emillion are from the British Isles. Those wouldn’t be shipped in barrels. But barrels were extremely useful and were used to store many things. While wine could have been shipped to Britain in barrels, once empty, those barrels would have been used for any number of things - beer perhaps, or any other liquid or even dry substance.
I think William’s right about sulfur. Pliny the Elder talked about using sulfur vapor as a way to improve, or disinfect wine and amphorae and barrels to get rid of any vinegary smells, and the Dutch and English traders burnt sulfur in their barrels.
As for the smoky flavor, the Romans apparently liked it, as they’d sometimes put the amphorae in a fumarium for smoking.
For me, the smokiness often comes with a sort of meaty quality as well that you can taste towards the back of your mouth. I’ve found it in some Syrah, both from France and CA, and in some Tempranillo from the Ribera del Duero region, but rarely in other wines.
For those who want to geeky about this stuff and cite the chemical components, Harold McGee has a new book out with a (sadly short) chapter on wine: Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells
My copy just landed on the doorstep, so I haven’t had a time to wade in.
One of the problems with written communication here is that one person’s match stick is another’s reduction.
I think we should remember that wine is a manufactured product. and the many decisions made along the way determine the outcome. Where to plant?What to plant? What clones and rootsticks??
Spacing and trellising…Then how to prune, when to prune, when to pick, the list goes on. Zelma Long told me she made over 300 decisions between picking and bottling.
To me:
matchstick =. SO2,
Thomas Kruse in the Hecker pass area once made a Thompson Seedless wine with sulfur sticks…am I conflating two wines?? His point was that matchstick came from SO2 and how the SO2 was introduced.
Buttery and Popcorn…diacetyl…from both malolactic fermentation and sometimes alcoholic fermentation…
For shipping older barrels were used. When the barrels ended up in the UK, they were put into service of Ports, Sherries, whisky, etc. Waste not, want not.
Paul Draper told me that at Ridge they imported a bunch of '66 clarets in barrels with the thought they would get free barrels. The barrels were ten years old or so!
As far as barrels are concerned, we barrel pimps have a saying: the wine can influence the way the barrel tastes! The way the wine is made influences the barrel influence.
To me barrel use --indeed every decision–has to be part of a master plan. Coche makes wines to age, so his wines are reductive when young and perhaps a tad oaky. But our friend Wm Kelley is just getting around to drinking his '59s, so that’s ok.
Gerald Asher maintains that the use of French oak in barrels dates from the Napoleonic wars, when Baltic oak was cut off. That wood was also used for fish and beer! One of the cooperages I worked with experimented with this wood for barrels. Nobody liked it. Times change.
Barrel making has gotten a lot more efficient. It used to be it took eight hours to joint enough wood for a barrel. Today, maybe ten minutes!
This is so very true.
I have always thought of the matchstick note as something that comes from reductive winemaking, and not SO2. I drink a lot of so called “natural wine” where SO2 is not added at any point, so the link to it has always been strange to me as i pick it up in those wines. But maybe i actual think about the matchstick note as mix of something more smokey along with a hint of SO2, but not as a pure SO2 smell.
Yeah, it’s a very nice book, although it becomes somewhat encyclopedic (the author admits that it should be used somewhat more as a reference book). the wine section is actually only just a few pages.
Always a pleasure to read your observations Mel. And you brought up something else that is often ignored - the wine affects the barrel as well as being affected by the barrel. I remember some wine makers telling me that they put very specific wines in certain barrels to “tune” those barrels for other wine.
But you make life too complicated dammit. There’s French oak and American oak and that’s it!
As far as matchstick - I always thought that was added sulfur, which is what most matchheads contain. I guess in some of them there’s a small bit of phosphorus - I think that used to be on the big exciting kitchen matches.
‘“Reduction” is a simplification, a language abuse,’ says Dominique Delteil, scientific director of the ICV in the south of France. ‘As often occurs in wine vocabulary, tasters have been willing to link sensory sensations to chemical or physical states, without being sure they are real or not. Reduction is typical of this.’ Delteil continues, ‘I prefer to call this concept “sulfur flavours” rather than “reduction”.’
Note that is article is old (2006), so the follow-up part about screw caps and reduction is talking about issues that have been largely resolved. But, that section does get into something that might be of interest to The Real Alan:
SO2 splits into various molecular forms in wine, of which only the free SO2 has any protective activity. It reacts with oxygen only slowly, so in actual fact its role is to bind up the products of oxidation in wine so that the oxidation isn’t apparent, even though oxidation of the wine components will already have occurred. This is a complicated, but important story, but it isn’t terribly relevant to our discussions here.
One of the questions about wine that has always fascinated me is, Where do flavors and aromas come from?? Some of the answers are easy and others make me wish I knew a flavor scientist.
I had a friend in the 70s who posited there were two types of white Burgundy: oatmealy and toasty. Then I discovered vignerons there used two types of barrels…toasty and not so toasty…hmm. All the time we thought it was some kind of terroir thing.
This reminds me of Clark Smith’s book. We have been taught to think of wine as a solution, whereas he thinks of it as cooking. You cook a dish a certain way and the dish develops along the way. Wine is not just a solution of tannin, alcohol etc. You can make it different ways and the results are different. Who knew?? The result can be a complicated soup of different chemicals not always easy to define. Of course, with cooking you can always start with the same ingredients but with wine the grapes are never the same.
What I meant might be of interest to you is compounds already oxidized, but bound up with SO2 and thus not perceived as oxidized. What does that tell you is happening with various decanting methods and “slow ox”?
Having worked in a lab as a chemist for many years before selling out and ‘doing’ marketing - - I differentiate easily between sulfur dioxide and struck match - I think that the two shouldn’t be confused. The latter has a spent firework ‘smoke,’ slightly reductive impression that only very, very modestly suggests the nose prickling, back-of-the-throat-burning aspects of SO2. Smoky is an adjective that I tend to use overwhelmingly more for reds to describe the more gothic elements (if present) of whole-cluster use…
Agreed. But just because no sulfur has been added, doesn’t mean that there is no sulfur in there
No of cause not. I am very aware of SO2 being a part of wine, thats why I wrote added. But i would just not expect those types of wines to be the ones that shows a SO2 note.
Well, I’m not sure I buy into the notion that SO2 can “bind up” some compounds that are the result of oxidation. I guess he’s saying that SO2 can somehow mask the presence of those compounds? I’d like to see the science behind that, because I don’t understand how that would work.
Apart from my questioning this particular premise, I have no idea what the connection would be to slow ox.
- I differentiate easily between sulfur dioxide and struck match - I think that the two shouldn’t be confused. The latter has a spent firework ‘smoke,’ slightly reductive impression that only very, very modestly suggests the nose prickling, back-of-the-throat-burning aspects of SO2. Smoky is an adjective that I tend to use overwhelmingly more for reds to describe the more gothic elements (if present) of whole-cluster use…