Marc Grenier Cooperage (Burgundy)(3)
By Bertrand Celce 2009-3-4 15:11:48
Hervé Villemade in the Loire, showing a Grenier vat with 51 hectoliters of red Cheverny "les Ardilles" 2007The annual output of the cooperage is between 100 and 150 units a year, depending of the sizes ordered. The stainless-steel additions are made elsewhere on Marc Grenier's specifications and fixed on the vats. The fitting of steel parts on a wooden container is arduous because if not properly done it can leak, remember that the wood is a living material and keeps breathing and moving, while steel is inert, and combining the two materials is not so easy. Didier Barrouillet of Clos Roche Blanche in the Loire told me that during the 10 years he has been working with Grenier vats, he never had a single leak. He also pointed to the fact that Marc Grenier always uses top-quality steel for the doors, top cap, thermometer and temperature coils, a stainless-steel known as grade 316. Didier Barrouillet added that these vats were high-end containers and were accordingly priced, but that the product was very satisfying. Many of the artisan vignerons who buy Grenier vats also appreciate the artisan spirit of this small cooperage. The big cooperages have many hierarchical layers, with technicians, sales executives, managers, and the client there never deals with someone who is at the same time the manager, the engineer and the worker. Grenier does that all and the vignerons appreciate this closeness. The only thing is that with success and production limits, a vigneron must carefully plan ahead to receive his order in time for the harvest.
checking wood boards (future staves) stored in the workshopThe return of the use of big-size wooden vats was facilitated by Marc Grenier's efficient renovations of old vats in the region : several large wineries were he renovated old vats were convinced by the pertinence of new (or renovated) wooden vats. They 
first discovered that remodelled vats were usable after only one day of watering when the staves had been properly reworked, compared with the old, non-renovated ones that needed 3 weeks of watering before being liquid-tight and again usable for fermentation after 11 months staying put and dry. After the disused wooden-vats pool dried up, these wineries began to order him new wooden vats and were pleased by the results. Then, after the larger wineries, smaller wineries followed suit and ordered custom-sized vats too, especially the natural-wine vignerons who appreciated the lively exchange taking place in these containers, the custom sizes fitting their different cuvées, some being sometimes very small, and the thermic shock-absorber-quality of the wood that prevents the wine, event without the use of a temperature-control system, from suffering from rapid temperature changes along the seasons.
The making of large-capacity vats implies the use of much thicher staves, which in turn ask for a much longer toasing of the inside of the cask. When a regular cask needs a 30-minutes or 45-minutes fire on its inside, a large wooden vat needs an entire day, for example they start at 7am, at noon they succeed to hold it tight with cables to wrap the thick hoops around it, and at the end of the afternoon they finish the job by putting it upside down and fastening the last hoops. They keep watering a bit the outside all along the operation (and the inside too occasionally) to prevent the wood from cracking and at the end of the day the huge vat gets its final bending and shape. Depending of the vignerons' wishes he is asked many different types of bending, angle and proportions, which mean differently-shaped staves and more or less arduous assembly with the hoops.
From wineterroirs.com
