Wines & Vines

February 2018 WINES&VINES 37 OAK BARRELS that dilutes the impact of the spring wood, he said. Kádár also sources a portion of its wood from Slovakia, over the border that lies about 25 miles away to the north. "The conditions are the same. It's all a part of the Inner Car- pathia Volcanic Mountains and the trees don't know about the border," Kalydy quipped. Just 5% of the trees are suitable for bar- rels, and cutting is limited to sections no bigger than 5 hectares at a time. Loggers harvest only the straightest trees and those that have few or no branches lower than about 40 feet up the trunk. One tree produces enough stave wood for a little less than one barrel, and one hectare produces no more than 10 barrels every 100 years. Government foresters regulate the prac- tices of the loggers and allow coopers to choose and buy logs directly from the forest or at auction. Forest land can be owned by the national government, private companies or local authorities. Forest owners are required to improve and protect the oak crop. Each forest region has a 10-year plan that is checked every year. Periodically, block by block, foresters remove underbrush and thin the oak trees to give the promising ones room to catch the sun. Har- vest is done in the winter, when the activity is less of a threat to young saplings. Horses drag out some of the logs in steep terrain since they cause less erosion than tractors. During the harvest, not all the trees in a block are taken. Not all of them are suitable for coopering, and the regulations also re- quire that "mother" trees be left standing for 20 years so their acorns will re-seed the block. The biggest part of the volume of wood that's cut becomes firewood for local homes, and ® StaVın Inc, P.O.Box 1693, Sausalito,CA 94966 (415) 331-7849 f (415) 331-0516 stavin.com © 2018 StaVin Inc. You don't always get what you pay for. Especially with barrels. On average, 90% of a traditional barrel's oak is for its own structure, and never actually makes contact with wine. Which means only 7 staves impart flavor, and the other 26 staves take up space. Not a particularly good value, in our book. Please call us for a few sound ideas about how you can do more with less. the U.S. Agency for International Develop- ment. During that time, he saw an opportu- nity with the Kádár cooperage. In 1993 the Molnar family started bring- ing trial barrels from the cooperative to the United States, and soon commercial barrels too. Over six years, the fam- ily helped reorganize the business and provide financing for wood purchases and seasoning time. The family became own- ers in 2000. Phil Burton of Barrel Builders in Napa Valley imported the Kádár barrels until 2011 and played a key role in the revitalization of the cooperage. Chêne et Cie, the owners of Tonnellerie Taransaud in France and Canton Cooperage in Kentucky, became 50% owners of Kádár in a joint venture with the Molnar family in 2008. A heat sensor measures temperature inside the staves during the toasting process.

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