Barrel making company Garbelloto in Veneto Italy

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Choice of wood:

The type of wood normally used is Oak, in its Quercus petrea and Quercus pedunculata species, blended together in unique proportions according to a formula tried and tested by this company.

Garbelloto can produce casks and barrels in cherrywood (Prunus avium and Prunus cerasus), Acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia), ash (Fraxinum excelsior) and chestnut (Castanea sativa) wood, as well as other less popular species.

Timber is bought directly on forest sites and accurately selected and checked by our expert master coopers in Conegliano. Only the best timber, successfully going through the strictest tests, is used to make casks, while less suitable one is put on sale. This combined business allows us to buy very large amounts of timber all over Europe (Slavonia, France and the Balkans) at more favourable conditions, and to make casks using only the best wood.

The first essential step of any cooperage activity is wood natural seasoning. That’s the only way to grant the wood’s chemical and physical stability. Conegliano moreover enjoys a special, temperate micro-climate (source: Treccani encyclopaedia) favouring wood seasoning.

Physical, because it’s not only a question of dehydration, but also of organic substances being irreversibly transformed to grant perfect stabilization of the wood, which will not swell up again when in contact with liquids.

Chemical, because the sap looses water and its polyphenols are no longer colloidal but go into solution, becoming more pleasant and ready to be absorbed by wine, conferring it a wonderful “bouquet”

Cask

There’s a huge difference involved in making a barrel, or barrique (holding from 7 to 750L) as opposed to a cask (10hl upwards): a barrel is easy to make because it only requires one bend (the staves one) and is small in size, while a cask requires from four (in its round format) to six of them (oval format), all to be brought together, a very difficult but essential job. All casks are bent directly on fire, unless otherwise required, and can be later toasted according to customer’s specifications. Staves are bent throughout from head to bilge, without weakening the wood to make bending easier.

Heads are bent with the “double arch” method, making up a large sphere (clic) section to resist internal pressure throughout the cask’s lifetime without using expensive and unsightly cross-bars, typical of outdated building techniques.

Without this very special and difficult bending operation the heads could develop dangerous deformations and even cause serious losses of cask’s contents.

The functional and rich hooping, with galvanized steel hoops and rounded borders, completes the cask construction. All casks are lightly planed inside to make the surface smooth and help cask cleaning in the cellar. They are then finished on the outside, for a perfectly smooth and beautiful final look. The finishing includes the application of a special transpiring protective varnish and a red band on the staves head, very important not only to make cleaning easier, but especially to protect the wood where it is most vulnerable (the only spot where wood fibres are broken and exposed).

Accessories: All casks are usually built complete with:

* Wood door, cut into one special central stave on the cask’s head.

* Inox steel valve applied to the door as desired.

* Central wine taster with fixed or pull out stopcock on the cask’s head.

* Wooden saddle in water resistant wood treated with impregnating liquid.

* Glass funnel or silicone plug on the upper bunghole.

Barrels:

They are quite simple to build because of their straight ends – only staves have to be bent. They require however lots of attention in both choice of wood and toasting. They produce 225/300/350L barrels, exclusively made with staves obtained through the “split wood” method, while 450/550/750L barrels can be made either with split or sawn staves.

Split wood is required to build 225/350L barrels (barriques) because their staves are 30/32 mm thick and oak wood, unlike other wood types, won’t ensure perfect tightness if it is less than 38/40 mm thick. Greater thickness, however, will guarantee the barrel’s perfect tightness with staves obtained both ways.

All stave-wood used to make our barrels (barriques), comes from the best European production sites: Slavonia, France (Allier, Never, Vosges), the Balkans, etc.. It must meet the strictest quality control standards set by our master coopers before it is seasoned and processed (see choice of wood)Processing includes fire bending of the staves and subsequent barrel toasting, which can be light, medium or heavy. Heads are toasted separately and assembled later. Toasting is a fundamental process, because wood’s lignin is thermo sensitive and, as it modifies, it will give way to most characteristic aromas: spicy, leathery, chocolaty, smoky, etc..

The functional, rich hooping, with galvanized hoops and rounded borders, completes the barrel’s construction.

Each barrel goes through a strict double testing, with a steam test to make sure that no stave cracked during bending, followed by a water test to check the barrel’s water tightness.

Reference:

http://www.garbellotto.it

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Barrel making company Garbelloto in Veneto Italy - Barrel making company Garbelloto in Veneto Italy - There's a huge difference involved in making a barrel, or barrique (holding from 7 to 750L) as opposed to a cask (10hl upwards): a barrel is easy to make because it only requires one ...