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W i n e s & V i n e s M A R C H 2 0 1 4 29 W I N E M A K I N G fire-toasted wood, then all of the above issues apply. If they come oven-roasted, there may be more uniformity—though ovens can have hot and cold spots, just like fermentation tanks. Finally, in an era when heavy toast has considerable cachet, Collins points out that attaining toast precision becomes more dif- ficult as the toast level gets higher. Lighter toasts can be made with more consistency; the line between medium-plus and heavy toast—both involving lots of heat and time— is particularly iffy, even for the output of a single cooperage. Cooperage constraints Even with the best of cooperage intentions, barrels are, in the original Middle-French sense of the term, manufactured: that is, hand made. They are not extruded from computer-controlled machines, which means every one is a little different from the one before and the one after. You can, of course, see this as a good thing. Gordon Burns at ETS labs, which has tested oak aromatics for years (see more below), notes that elsewhere in winemaking, we applaud the fact that the raw materials that go into wine are varied and different, coming from distinct vineyards and vintages. Knox remembers a time when there was a certain fondness for barrel individuality, as though each one had a cooper's signature on it (as some do); but as wineries have gotten bigger and more competitive, pressure for consis- tency has mounted. Cooperages don't produce barrel variation on purpose, or because they are too cheap or too incompetent to implement quality-con- trol programs. Knox explained that his two major cooperages have detailed protocols for aging, air exposure, grain width and toasting time and temperature; barrels are, however, he says, "made by human beings." What's a winemaker to do? Even if we think of barrel variation as charm- ing, or admit that it's inevitable, it still poses practical problems for wineries. In particular, variation makes small-scale barrel trials, which nearly all wineries do nearly every year, a somewhat perilous exercise. If the same wine is put in four different medium- plus barrels, and a taste-off leads to ordering 50 of the winning wood, how would you know that your trial barrel wasn't an outlier? How confident can you be that you won't have more vanilla or less spice in 5,000 cases of wine two years from now? The fact of variability leaves wineries with four basic coping strategies to choose from. 707-938-1300 info@acrolon.com ® Mel_Knox_Feb11.qxp 12/13/10 12:55 PM Page 1 DR. ERic HERvé/ETS LaBoRaToRiES These spider plots from ETS show the varied aromatic characteristics between medium- plus-toast barrels from different coopers.