The Eggman Presents

The wine world is talking about Eggs. Egg shaped vessels in with wine is matured. By coincidence I am seen as a pioneer of this method of production.
I started using them 4 years ago in Chianti when I imported 2 egg shaped ceramic vessels made in the Barossa Valley in Australia into Italy. Then together with my good friend and winemaker Sean O’Callaghan we bought two cement egg shaped vessels from Nomblot in France.
My research identified producers in Italy itself, notably Clayver, Sirio and Porcellanea and I now have a collection of these vessels too in five different wineries in Italy in which I make wine: in the Veneto, Chianti (2), Montalcino and Sicily.
So why egg shaped, simply the shape enables better circulation combined with better contact with the lees.
The egg shape was developed by Chapoutier when in 2012 he asked Marc Nomblot to make an egg shaped cement vessel. Subsequently Marc sold Nomblot and has now started a new business making similar egg shaped cement vessels called Oeufs de Bourgogne.
When I visited Simei in Milan recently he was exhibiting and there were a number of other new producers including an egg shaped oak barrel (cost 43,000€) and a computerised cement egg in which you can ferment and that can be programmed to stir the wine without help from mankind (only 18,000€).
My friend at Clayver had a large stand (see picture),
They make Trio, 3 vessels egg shaped on 400L each hosed on a stainless steel stand.
So my conclusion is that the egg shape is proven and here to stay.
BUT
The benefit of the egg shaped was only one of the reasons why I chose to make my wines using ceramic vessels. I had become fed up with the heavily oaked high alcohol red wines. Even the French had taken to papering to the American/Parker taste buds in order to gain the magical 90 points. A recent tasting of the 2005 Bordeaux wines merely endorsed my view.
I wanted to go back to enhancing the natural flavours of the grape and producing elegant juicy, fruity wines with long lengths of taste in the mouth. Al the ceramic vessels I use are porous, so you get 2 benefits from this:
- natural low oxidation of the wine.
- natural temperature control, the cool air filters into the wine on the outside of the egg and this cools the inner wine.
Also these vessels are inert and add no flavours to the wine. And unlike some terracotta they contain no metal/iron, aluminium or cadmium. All the vessels I use are certified free of all such materials by the relevant Food Standards Authority.
All all the vineyards with whom I work have adopted organic standards in both their vineyards and winery. Indeed some of them are certified biodynamic.