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BARRELS the cooper's clients in the Midwest and eastern United States have used their own trees from wood lots they've aged themselves. "Everything is customizable," he says. Narrowing down the options LOUISE BASSETT Vincent Nadalie with Nadalie USA cooperage in Calistoga, Calif., says barrels are built to customer specifications relative to toast, size and stave thickness. The cooper offers the traditional French barrel styles as well as its Perle Blanche barrel designed specifically for white wines. The barrel is built using staves with tight and straight wood grain that undergo additional water treatments and air seasoning. Nadalie says the cooperage can work with other custom requests, but stock dictates availability. (Choices in August and September are going to be far more limited than in February.) Tonnellerie Allary provides a range of barrels up to 600 liters in size and a selection of toasts that include a lower temperature long toast, according to Nicholas Keeler, the cooper's U.S. representative. He says other options include forest of origin, stave thickness and grain tightness. "We are easily able to adapt our production to their demands," he says of the company's clients. "If there is a special demand, or an exceptional lot of oak becomes available, we are able to work with our clients from the very beginning—offering complete control, security and tracking of their custom barrel-making process." Tonnerlie Radoux's sales and marketing manager, Martin McCarthy, makes a similar point, saying some of Barcodes on these barrel staves are from Tonnerlie Radoux's OakScan system. "In a sense, every barrel we sell is a custom barrel. You start off with a whole bunch of options and narrow it down." —Martin McCarthy, Tonnellerie Radoux Most client consultations begin in late winter and early spring. McCarthy says a client's style may match standard toast and barrel types, but it's quite common to tweak those standards to fit winemaking styles. "In a sense, every barrel we sell is a custom barrel," he says. "You start off with a whole bunch of options and narrow it down." McCarthy admits the range of barrel options gets much narrower for someone calling at the height of harvest. Wood of origin "is usually the best point of departure" for starting the process of matching the right barrels to wine, McCarthy says. From there, it's a matter of determining toast, size and any other coopering options such as varying toast time and temperature. Because every cooper is essentially using the same trees, McCarthy says that proprietary toasts and toasting methods can really provide the custom elements that differentiate barrels. He says one such step is bousinage, the process of placing a metal lid over the top of the barrel during toasting. McCarthy Build a barrel on your iPad C ooperages 1912 launched its own iPad app that lets winemakers adjust barrel elements and watch flavor profiles change instantly. Using a series of drop-down menus, winemakers can pick the per- centage of American, French or European oak as well as the grain, drying time, toasted or untoasted heads, head oak, stave bending options and toasting profile. As the winemaker inputs different selections, a spider graph of characteristics such as vanilla, light toast, dark toast, fruit, smoke, spice, tannin and "impact" changes. The app allows winemakers to choose oak percentages and barrel features, then scroll through almost 80 different toast options and watch how each changes the spider graph. (A numeric value is listed for each component as well.) Winemakers can save multiple barrel profiles by date, name or blend and email the cooperage to get a quote. The app also has a "They're really designing the exact barrel they want," says Jason Stout, international sales director for Cooperages 1912. "That's about as customized as you can get." The app is free, but users must obtain login information from Coo- function to design custom barrelheads as well as an option to email perages 1912. the proposed barrel design directly to a barrel sales rep. A.A. Win es & Vin es F EB RUA RY 20 13 39