Marc Grenier Cooperage (Burgundy)(2)
By Bertrand Celce 2009-3-4 15:11:48
Marc Grenier shows us a big 9000-liter vat in-the-making and we climb a ladder to see the inside. He shows how to hammer down the hoops 
to their position, walking all the while rapidly around the vat. The operation makes a deafening noise and he put his ear plugs for that. From this high point of view, you really feel like being in a shipyard on some kind of shooner...
If most of the production at Grenier consists in Tronconic vats, the cooperage also makes foudres, which are big-volume casks, with a capacity between 1000 and 6000 liters. The capacity of Grenier's wooden tronconic vats goes from 800 liters fror a small one to 15 000 liters for the biggest. You have several types of tronconic vats. The Burgundy one, which is open (not covered with a lid) is used only for the fermentation of the wine (the one on the left on the top-left picture on the wall). These open vats are the ones that you can see for example in Philippe Pacalet's vat room (pic on top) or in Albert-Bichot's wineries (scroll down for the picture). Then, along the years, Marc Grenier has engineered many additional features on his tronconic vats, in particular the moveable stainless-steel top and built-in temperature control and thermmometer, which allowed a much wider use of the wooden container, first as a sophisticated wooden fermentation vat and then as elevage vat. He deposed the trademark of his innovations under the name of Vinistock, but his stainless-steel additions were nontheless replicated by other cooperages. When you see them elsewhere, remember that Marc Grenier was the original inventor of these stainless-steel inlays. The buyers come from the different wine regions of France (60% - with the exception of Bordeaux, a region which is reluctant to buy in Burgundy) and from abroad (40%), the export countries being Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, South-Africa, Australia, New-Zealand, Greece. He uses only Frenck oak, mostly from central France and eatern France.
The cooperage's workshop If the tronconic vats are common in Burgundy, the foudres are not, and they are being bought in regions like the Loire, southern France, Alsace and Italy. The Burgundy Pinot-Noir is better off in small, normal casks because it needs more aeration and exchange. The oval foudres spotted on a picture pinned on the wall had a 1500-liter capacity and was exported to Italy. The oval shape is often asked for room convenience : you can have more of 
these foudres in a small vatroom if you choose an oval shape. Some vintners see also benefits for the elevage with these oval containers because the lees don't deposit the same way in an oval foudre (the contact-surface between the lees at the bottom of the foudre, and the wine, is smaller), which results in a different interaction between the lees and the wine. Some vignerons look for this result and choose purposedly a tall and narrow, oval foudre. But making a foudre, either cask-shaped or oval, is much more time-consuming than making a tronconic vat : he could make three tronconic vats for the time spent on making a single foudre. So most of his production consists of tronconic vats.
If he began his activity in 1982 by renovating old open-top wooden vats for wineries (some were 100 years old) , he stopped doing that 4 years ago. Actually, at the very beginning, he worked with his grand-father in law who had a vat-renovation workshop in the main street of Corberon. When he settled shop himself, he kept doing this, finding old, disused wooden vats in wineries and remodelling them for a new life, another century of good services. To have an idea of how such disused-vats looked like before his renovation work, just look at the tiny one that he gave to Philippe Pacalet a few years ago (picture on left, shot at Pacalet), it is at least one-hundred years old according to Marc Grenier and keeps working (ending its life in Pacalet's vatroom is a rather nice ending for a vat) without having been renovated, except for the addition of a stainless tab.. Having seen myself several of his renovated vats in several wineries, I can imagine it takes nearly as much time as making a new one : they often looked like new, each having gone through total dismantling, rework and replacement of the damaged staves, plus installment of a stainless-steel opening and screwable top-cap. Even the wood of the old staves look new after having been lightly planed down and you harly believes these are 60-, 80- or 100-year old wooden vats...
If most of the production at Grenier consists in Tronconic vats, the cooperage also makes foudres, which are big-volume casks, with a capacity between 1000 and 6000 liters. The capacity of Grenier's wooden tronconic vats goes from 800 liters fror a small one to 15 000 liters for the biggest. You have several types of tronconic vats. The Burgundy one, which is open (not covered with a lid) is used only for the fermentation of the wine (the one on the left on the top-left picture on the wall). These open vats are the ones that you can see for example in Philippe Pacalet's vat room (pic on top) or in Albert-Bichot's wineries (scroll down for the picture). Then, along the years, Marc Grenier has engineered many additional features on his tronconic vats, in particular the moveable stainless-steel top and built-in temperature control and thermmometer, which allowed a much wider use of the wooden container, first as a sophisticated wooden fermentation vat and then as elevage vat. He deposed the trademark of his innovations under the name of Vinistock, but his stainless-steel additions were nontheless replicated by other cooperages. When you see them elsewhere, remember that Marc Grenier was the original inventor of these stainless-steel inlays. The buyers come from the different wine regions of France (60% - with the exception of Bordeaux, a region which is reluctant to buy in Burgundy) and from abroad (40%), the export countries being Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, South-Africa, Australia, New-Zealand, Greece. He uses only Frenck oak, mostly from central France and eatern France.
If he began his activity in 1982 by renovating old open-top wooden vats for wineries (some were 100 years old) , he stopped doing that 4 years ago. Actually, at the very beginning, he worked with his grand-father in law who had a vat-renovation workshop in the main street of Corberon. When he settled shop himself, he kept doing this, finding old, disused wooden vats in wineries and remodelling them for a new life, another century of good services. To have an idea of how such disused-vats looked like before his renovation work, just look at the tiny one that he gave to Philippe Pacalet a few years ago (picture on left, shot at Pacalet), it is at least one-hundred years old according to Marc Grenier and keeps working (ending its life in Pacalet's vatroom is a rather nice ending for a vat) without having been renovated, except for the addition of a stainless tab.. Having seen myself several of his renovated vats in several wineries, I can imagine it takes nearly as much time as making a new one : they often looked like new, each having gone through total dismantling, rework and replacement of the damaged staves, plus installment of a stainless-steel opening and screwable top-cap. Even the wood of the old staves look new after having been lightly planed down and you harly believes these are 60-, 80- or 100-year old wooden vats...
From wineterroirs.com