Napa Valley residents are used to seeing wooden wine barrels: in wine caves, stacked outside warehouses and even cut in half and filled with flowers on neighborhood lawns. Barrels are everywhere in ...

It takes two to four centuries to grow the oak tree for a wine barrel. Then, after tree harvest, four, usually more, years to season the wood and the staves. Finally, it is time to turn the staves ...

Even though the vast majority of sauvignon blancs are unoaked, this grape comes in second behind chardonnay in frequency of barrel use — a legacy of its history in the barrel-obsessed Bordeaux region.

Winemakers: To oak or not to oak, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up oak to craft your wine to shake the spheres ...

With the heat turned up here in the high country, I got to thinking about the chilly wine caves and barrel rooms I have had the opportunity to explore over the years. The cool, dry 55° air, the ...

First, a 2022 Merlot from Central Washington. Then, a Pilsner Urquell, followed by a Guinness stout, a No-Li amber ale, a Sierra Nevada pale ale, two nonalcoholic beers and a Trader Joe's tequila.

There was a time, years ago, when used wine and bourbon barrels would be burned because they’d be piling up without a purpose. Don Rodarte is doing his part to find another life for the wooden ...