TyroSphere

Last days at the Cooperage

2007-08-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my last day at the cooperage with Grand Fred and the rest of the coopers. I was invited to Seb’s house in Cognac, which was an honor for me. He lives in a humble old house that looks very stereotypical of French living. It is not what we think of as a house though; it is like 200 year old apartment building. It just off a main street, so I could see many people walking back from the bakery and other little shops with bags full of food for that night's dinner. He introduced me to his wife and his two little girls and his parents and his father-in-law.

Interestingly, in France the whole extended family live very close and they see each other every day. We had quite a funny episode just after meeting Seb's father-in-law. He was giving Seb and his wife his old washing machine. (A side note: the washing machines here are maybe about 1/3 the size they are in America. It looks like you can only wash about 3 shirts and 1 pair of pants, but that is nether here nor there.) So, Seb and I carried it through the very narrow house to where the old one was. We set it down and I went out to meet his little girl, when I came back Seb was fighting with the water hose in the back of the washing machine that was spraying out of control, drenching him and the entire kitchen. It was very funny.

We stayed in Cognac for a few hours and then went back to the cooperage to meet Nico (one of the owners of the cooperage and with whom I am staying). He was showing some friends his prototype called “Oxo Lift” that is like a fork lift that is smaller and is pushed opposed to ridden. We played a few games of Petanque (a very popular game in France) with Seb and another person from the cooperage and some of Nico’s friends.

We went out to eat at a restaurant that is owned by a friend of Nico. It is right on a river and on Sundays is a popular place for elderly couples to go dancing. Some of the coopers invited me to go out to a popular club in the town of Saints, so Seb was going to take me and we would meet up with the coopers later in the night, but before I would go with the coopers the group that went out to dinner went out on the town. Nico and his wife headed home at about 1:30 when we went to the club. It was a very big club and had 5 different clubs inside one club. It had a techno, a house, a disco, a rock and a rap club inside this one mega club. It was very impressive and I had never seen anything like it, however I do not frequent many European “Discotheques.” It was called La Vegas and was a very fun experience to have for one of my last nights in France.

I am very happy that the coopers enjoyed having me around. In the beginning, I most likely made much more work for them due to the fact that I had no idea what I was doing. This is because I am not a master cooper and when they explained what I was to do, it was explained in French and very broken English; but after working with them, joking with them, yelling with them, and many “thumbs up” and other hand gestures we have established a very funny friendship. A few say they are coming to live with me in California for a while, so next summer I may establish a new American branch of Tonnellerie Baron.
--Drew

Back from Bayonne to Baron

2007-08-07T16:31:00.001-07:00

The past two days I have been back at the cooperage, however, I had quite a week of excitement. Last week the cooperage was closed for vacation, so I was back in Bordeaux with Lionel and his family. I spent a few days helping him clean up around his new house that he had just moved into a few days before. I was weed-whacking and helping him install speakers in his wall. The floor that I helped install looks very good and the house still has that wonderful smell of “new house,” and because it is so new they have a very strict no shoes policy, however the floor still graced with foot prints. This is most likely from their young daughter Maelle who does not follow the policy as intently as the rest.

Lionel’s wife’s brother Gregory was also at the house. He helped Lionel and me install part of the floor. He is 23 and had talked to me about this big festival in the south of France called Bayonne. He invited me and told me that he was going with his older brother and some of his friends. I told him it sounds good, but I would have to be able to work on Monday. He said it was possibility, so we talked to Lionel about it and he said that is was fine so we were off and planning.

Bayonne is a festival in a southern town called Bayonne, strangely enough. It is the world's 3rd oldest party and it is to celebrate the bullfights. Now, not more then a month ago I finished The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway, which, in an over simplified recap of the novel, tells the story of him and a group of his friends going to one of these parties and bull fights. So, I was very excited to live the life of Hemingway.

There are a total of 30,000 people at this event every day and it goes 5 days long. Everyone is dressed in all white with a red bandanna tied around their neck and a red scarf as a belt. It is utterly amazing to see the streets of a beautiful old city without cars and thousands of people dressed in the same red and white uniform. I was asked to run in front of the bull, but I had to refuse because it sounded like there was not much to gain and I like living more then being scared of my stake for the rest of my life.

It was a wonderful time and a great experience, yet to fully explain I would have to write a thousand or so words on the topic and, frankly, I am tired from my work at the cooperage; which is the real reason I am here.

So today and yesterday I have been back at the cooperage with big Fred in the toasting room. It is nice now to be able to be an asset to him instead of the contrary. I now understand the system of the toasting room. Today Big Fred brought me a branch of apples clearly ripped off of a tree by his house. So for a break we shared this branch full of apples and half a bottle of wine that he had kept cool in a cooler that he uses to keep the rest of his lunch in. To give you another idea of how "big" Big Fred is, his cooler could be used for car camping to keep a family of 4’s food from spoiling!

It was very nice to be back at the cooperage and see all the coopers. Although we do not speak the same language and have not known each other very long we all have a great time together. There is a cooper named Seb who is a good friend. He and I shared a room in Scotland and worked together on OXO Line. He is a little over 30, but looks and acts as if her were in his 20’s. He has a wife and a daughter that I don’t know, but heard a lot of in Scotland. He is clearly a leader among the workers at the cooperage, so it was an easy in with the other more shy coopers. I think they are planning something for me the Friday that I finish at the cooperage, but not sure what it is. I think this because different people keep asking me what I am doing on Friday and then another person will tell me to keep Friday night clear, but all in very broken and hand language English/French. So to my knowledge it may not even be a surprise, I just may not understand.

Today and yesterday I also toasted the tops and bottoms of barrels, which is much harder in some ways then toasting the barrel themselves. It is much hotter which is hard to imagine, but you are kneeling next to the fire spinning the top or bottom around a very hot fire. I probably drank 2 liters of water today just toasting the tops. It also burnt all the hair off of my knee through my thick Carhartt work pants. Oh well, aside from sweating profusely, burning your hands thought thick gloves and your knees, it is still fun. I also helped fabricate the metal rings on the barrels today. I mashed the nuts that hold the ring together. It is not as hard as working in the toasting room, but it is still not easy.

Anyways I have to go to bed, but you will here from me soon enough. --Drew

Back from Bayonne to Baron

2007-08-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

Scotland Wrap Up

2007-07-31T11:31:00.000-07:00

I am back in France, however, I was not able to bring you fully up-to-speed on Whiskey making and the OXO Line that we installed. First of all, the Arran Distillery has only been in existence sine 1995, so they are just now able to produce high quality Scotch Whiskey. It was very strategically placed to be able to use a stream’s water that is supposed to have the perfect sweetness and balance for Scotch. It was said a little more than one hundred years ago that because of the water the isle of Arran made the best illegal whiskey (the taxes were so high that there were only about a handful of legal distilleries in Scotland). According to the Scottish, Scotland in general has the “perfect” climate for making Whiskey because the temperature never really changes –– even in the summer it was cold half the day and rained a little bit –– so the Arran Distillery is perfectly sited for making great Scotch Whiskey. The distillery uses 100% traditional methods like non-chill filtering and fermenting the mash with Oregon pine in the tank. Whiskey is distilled twice, which is traditional for scotch and, surprisingly, when it comes out of the second distillation the liquid is clear. Scotch only gains its flavor and color from agingin in barrels. Here's where America comes in: the barrels are bought from Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and other bourbon whiskey makers in America who, by law, can only use oak barrels once for whiskey. So, it is a good deal for the scotch whiskey makers who buy their old barrels that give flavor and other characteristics to the scotch whiskey. They also buy port, cognac, wine, sherry and other alcohol barrels to make what they call Cask Strength. This means that for the last nine months the whiskey is moved from bourbon barrels to one of these other barrels which gives the scotch some different flavors and complexities that were found in the last alcohol. Cask Strength also has a higher alcohol content than the regular single malt.

Now for OXO Line 2. To my understanding the Whiskey industry has trouble with stacking their barrels, so the new stacking structure could potentially be the cure-all. OXO Line 2 is a metal structure, holding the barrels with metal leaves that stick out of big poles that are bolted into the cement. This is a horrible description -- but hopefully the picture will give you a better idea of the structure! It is not very hard to build, but since we installed about 3,000 units it was a lot of work.

It felt good to be done and be on the ferry headed to Glasgow for a night before we caught our early morning flight to London and then back to France. Glasgow was fun, we checked out the night life. The feeling of being done and seeing more then ten people in a night was just what we all needed. It is now the weekend here in France and I am not sure what we are going to do, but I am ok with doing nothing.
--Drew

Scotland

2007-07-25T00:05:00.000-07:00

I have been in Scotland for a few days working at a scotch distillery on an island called Arran, off of the Scottish coast. I have yet to take a tour of the distillery, but tomorrow morning I am going to take a tour with the president. His name is James and he has a very thick Scottish accent. I have been translating English between him and my French team. We are installing the OXO 2 system for stacking barrels. Today and yesterday were not as hard as working at the cooperage, but not as interesting either. I was put in charge of placing black caps on the ends of the nuts. I also helped prepare for the next wave of racks, and that was more labor-intense then the cooperage. To put the caps on the nuts I have to climb the stacking structure that is about 35ft high; after a while it gets very tiring. After we finished work, we went to the pub to get food and play golf without clubs -- we played by throwing the ball! We would play balls, but there are too many bugs.

The Scottish countryside is very beautiful and Arran is pretty isolated. You have to take a ferry to get here, but worth it because it is very green with very picturesque mountains. Since it is summer here the sun doesn't really set until around 11:30pm, and then rises very early -- 5am. This really messes with my internal clock, but oh well. The team is very good and we are having a great time.
--Drew
photo: Martin Frojd RipperDoc

Mark Knopfler is ... lost in translation

2007-07-21T16:05:00.000-07:00

Day 3 of Barrel Making
Today I continued to toast with big Fred. It was nice to know what I was doing right off the bat and I am also starting to be able to try to talk with some of the guys. The conversations don’t really go anywhere, but it is funny what subjects they ask me about. For example: Mark Knopfler…..yes they asked me to tell them about Mark. Now I don’t dislike his music, in fact I like it alot, yet I don’t know much about his personal life and what he does with his spare time.

After the toasting was complete, a guy named Simon took me around and wanted me to make a wine barrel with him the whole way through. Simon is about 5’7’’ and has dark brown long hair. He wears shorts with many rips and tears in them with and has the 3-day beard going on. He is a very mellow person, so he was a good teacher, because he would just laugh and talk in French when I made a mistake.

I know that I told you the steps to barrel making in the previous post, but I failed to see many steps that are obvious but take a great deal of time and skill. Simon was making a barrel alongside me so I could see how it was done. He did not know much English and he really wanted to talk to me so we had a few conversation where I would just move my head and agree and he did the same when I talked to him. After work he invited me to go somewhere with him for his vacation, however I had to refuse because I think that it was somewhere in Spain. All the coopers are very young which Nico, one of the owners, tells me is a good thing because they are all very good now and he thinks they have great promise for the future. I am leaving for Scotland this weekend, so until then, -- Drew

Barrel Making, Day 2

2007-07-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

Day 2
Today I worked inside the toasting room, which has the capacity for 5 barrels at a time. However since I have been here there have been only 4 going at a time. I am working with a man named Big Fred. To say the least he is big and he has been cooping since he was 14 — he is now 44. He is a big man. If he were alive in medieval times he would have easily been called Little John. He has red hair, spent a few years in America cooping in St. Helena, so he knows about 30 words in English, and loves to work really hard and listen to soft rock really loud. The first step in the toasting process is to take the skeleton looking barrel (it only has one side of the rungs and the other side looks like rib bones, so it creates a cone shape) and put it over the fire station. The next station is where you apply the other side of the rungs on the barrel. You do this by using a cable and a winch to pull it tight. The skeleton barrel is then sprayed with water and is pulled tighter to have a normal appearance. You let all the water evaporate off the sides of the barrel where it was sprayed and then you pull it a bit tighter and pull it off the fire and set it on its side. You put a rung on the very end of the barrel to hold the “normal” shape of a barrel and release the tension of the cable. You flip the barrel around and continue to heat while hammering down the rungs. The next station is just for heating, unless you have a 400 Lt barrel. In-between stages 2-3 you hammer the rungs of the barrel and also the inside to make sure all the pieces of wood are placed perfectly. THEN THE TOASTING: The toasting is where you put smaller pieces of oak in the fire and build up a medium sized flame and then put a metal lid on the top of the barrel to put out the fire little by little. The smoke is what gives the barrel its flavor.

The toasting is hard to explain, but the imagery is beautiful. It is a small, darker room that is all made of concrete. It is in the heart of the cooperage so you can see people walking, drilling, yelling, laughing, and pushing all around you. The smell of the freshly toasted barrels is one of the best on earth: it is like waking up to homemade bread, sweet and comforting, but even better. The room is warm and smoky with a brilliant glow about the side of the barrels and the walls. It is very refreshing.

After toasting was done (it goes till 3pm) I was scraping the tops of wine barrels, which really hurts the hands and is very dull. I was relieved when some coopers thought it would be fun - and funny for them - for me to shape the barrels. They don’t speak English, but they communicated well enough with eyes and gestures. They showed me how to do it and I was not even close to good. First you lay out all the rough wood that goes into a barrel. Then is really gets too hard to explain, but take my word for it, it is hard and I am nowhere near even mediocre.

The coopers seem to think that I am the crazy American and that I love the hard work that they endure every day, so we have a mutual respect for each other. We struggle to understand one another, but find is easy to share the joy of laughter.
--Drew

Work commences on the barrels

2007-07-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

I am now in a place called Saints, where the cooperage is, staying with one of the owners of the cooperage. His name is Nico and his wife’s name is Sev. They have two children named Seb and Ocean. Today was my first day in the cooperage. It is amazing how many steps it takes to make a wine barrel. To sum it up shortly and without overstepping my knowledge; they start with big oak trees that the cooperage orders. These are brought to the cooperage in a piece about 20ft long and about as round as a beach ball with the bark still attached. They are split into pieces that are then aged for about 3 years outside. They are then brought into the cooperage and planed again. They are now ready to become a part of a barrel. A cooper will make the original form of a barrel using these pieces and metal rungs that keep the shape of the barrel. They are pounded into place with hammers and chisels. The barrels are then toasted for about 15min and then are placed under a machine that does something with barrels to insure they are water/air tight. They use water and high pressure to check. The insides are let to dry out. The barrels as this point are not good looking and clean, so the next step is to chisel and sand the barrels as will to remove the shaping metal rungs and secure the metal rungs that we see on the barrels. This is all done by one man with a machine that looks like a huge apple peeler (the ones that hold the apples sideways and as the apple twists the skin is removed by a metal blade). The same principle is used, but the apple skin remover is a man with a planer. The metal rungs are hammered on while the barrel is spun to insure they are not sideways. Then the barrel is branded with the cooperage's logo -- this is literally done by a person holding a branding iron. The finishing touches are what I specialized in: I sanded off all the small subtle imperfections (mainly where the apple peeler had missed) and some writing on the barrel to mark certain specifications. The barrels are then packaged and sent out!

I started off my day bending the metal that is going to hold the barrel together. It comes in huge circular spools that you cut into about 6ft pieces of metal. I then would put this long piece of thin metal into a machine that would bend it to a perfect setting. I would check it against a barrel about ever 20th time. After shaping about 160 wine barrel rungs, I then became the sanding master. I received the barrels after the brand and begin to sand the whole barrel, for the most part. It is very time consuming and needs to be done with care or else you can scratch the metal on the barrel. I would use one piece of sandpaper on my sander per barrel, so they were constantly well sanded.

Not too many people in the cooperage speak very good English or ever English at all, so I am getting very good at using my body to communicate what I am trying to say. I am also picking up some useful phrases, for example “I understand or j’ai compris” & “je peux faire ca or I can do that.”

I have also been told that next week I am going to Scotland to set up a whiskey distillery with one of the cooperage's new ways to stack barrels that they call OXO 2. I think that the team will be about 5 strong. I was told that they do about 95% (if not more) of their business with the wine industry, but since distilleries don’t buy new barrels, because it flavors the whiskey like oak in wine, they buy the OXO line.

I am still having problems finding places with working Internet so I will try to keep you updated ASAP.

--Drew

Bastille Day in Bordeaux

2007-07-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

To bring you up to speed I have been in Bordeaux, France. I have been here for a few days and have had a hard time finding Internet access. I have been staying with a few different young families, in their late 20’s. The first is Lionel and his wife Favie; they have a little girl that is named Maelle. They are very nice and they both know English pretty well. Lionel is in charge of sales at the cooperage and is a partial owner. The next family I stayed with was Damien and his wife Sophie who live in a beautiful old house in Pomerol. It is beautiful country with lower temperatures then Napa or Sonoma, but more humid. Pomerol is located about 30 km outside of the city of Bordeaux itself, however the wine region is still known as Bordeaux. Pomerol is famous for Merlot and Cabernet – some of the best Merlots and Cabernets in the world come from this small town. The people here are all very friendly. The landscape is much flatter than Napa or Sonoma and the vines are all much older. The city of Bordeaux is beautiful and on the 14th we celebrated Bastille Day, the equivalent of our 4th of July, but just 10 days later. Much like the USA they have fireworks and everyone goes out and celebrates. The day of the 14th we went to the beach and during the evening we went to the city of Bordeaux. The day after we had a traditional lunch/brunch; we bought all the cheeses, bread, and meat at the farmers market much like one would see in the movies. From what I understood the town of Libourne has these markets every other day.

I have been to the cooperage and it is not what I expected. I thought that it would be a big factory with many machines and workers. Instead it is a few very old buildings with some equipment and the capacity to produce 20 complete wine barrels a day. They have 3 full- time coopers. It is really an art to creating a hand made wine barrel. The cooperage that I am working for is Tonnenellerie Baron and they have made many innovations in the barrel cooping industry; for example, a wine barrel that you can ferment in and a new way to stack wine barrels. Until I know more I will not go into details, but it is supposed to be easier and produce great results. Until next time,
--Drew

On the road

2007-07-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

In the grand tradition of my travelling dad, Kerry, I am going to spend a month working in France. My parents believe I should know what they do from ground up so that is what I have been doing this summer. I have learned to repair deer fences, make fire lines and, today, hauled 340 wine barrels for one of my dad's clients.

Tomorrow I leave for France. Our family friend Parke Hafner, from Hafner Winery, has had French interns for years and has arranged my first internship with the much respected barrel producer, Tonnellerie Baron. Tonnellerie Baron started making barrels in 1875 and they purchase oak from all over France and America. I have only had a few years of middle school French, so I have decided that I will ether be very lonely, and read a lot and make barrels or learn some French, meet people and be social – I am going to work on the French.

My goal is to understand how high quality wine barrels are produced and to better understand the French wine style and tradition.