Oak Is a Seasoning, Not a Flavour

Barrels should be felt and not tasted. If the first thing you notice in a glass is oak, we have made a mistake somewhere between the forest and the bottle, and the wine is going to spend the next five years apologising for it.

What we actually buy

We buy from two coopers, both working French oak, both air-drying their staves for three years before a barrel is built. Air drying is slow and expensive and it is the whole game: kiln-dried oak gives up its tannin all at once and tastes like a plank.

Toast is a seasoning, not a flavour

A medium toast rounds the mid-palate and adds a little spice. A heavy toast adds coffee and smoke, and it is a very easy thing to fall in love with and a very hard thing to take back out. Our standing order is medium, with a handful of medium-plus barrels each year for the parcels that can carry it.

When we get it wrong

It happens. A parcel goes into new oak and comes out three months later smelling like a carpentry shop. The answer is not to bottle it and hope: the wine goes back into older, neutral barrels, sits for another year, and joins the blend at a much smaller percentage than we planned. Nobody tastes the mistake. We just make less of that wine.