Why ceramic and why egg shaped?
I had become fed up with over oaked, high alcohol wines. If you like fed up with Parkerisation. Wine is made from grapes which have a natural taste and flavour. Wine has been made for centuries and was originally made in terracotta pots often placed in the ground as a form of temperature control.
The Vessels…
Tom Shobbrook who trained in Chianti and returned to his family vineyard in Barossa Valley in Australia was using ceramic egg shaped vessels called Magnum 675. These were made of clay which originated in Cornwall in England. Winemakers imported Toms wines. So I bought two Magnum 675’s and imported them into Italy to be used by Setriolo and Sean O’Callaghan to make my first wines. My research then showed that similar vessels were being made in Italy by Clayver, Sirio and Porcellanea, I thought how interesting it would be to compare each of these vessels and so…
Sean O’Callaghan was using Nomblot cement egg shaped tanks and so….
I am now the proud owner of Clayver 400 Litre vessels, Sirio 650 Litre, and Porcellanea 300 and 500 Litre and Nomblot 1600 Litre and 600 Litre. These are situated in 5 different Wineries.
Every wine maker’s must-have
The cone, the sphere, the ellipsoid, the tulip, the truncated pyramid – wine vats come in a bewildering array of shapes these days, but none has made as much of an impact on the 21st-century wine world as the egg.
“No serious winery would be caught dead nowadays without at least one eggshaped vessel. But why have they become so popular and what effect do they have on the wine?”
Anything but Oak
In recent years in Italy Winemakers have moved away from using so much oak.
“ All of this is a reaction to the French barrique. “
But I do believe that a small proportion of oaked wine can add depth, tannins and character to my wines. So I have a small collection of oak barrels:
- From Italy: Mittelberger; Garbellotto
- From France: Boutes
- From Austria: Stockinger
- From Hungary: Kadar
All of these are lightly toasted. The object being to keep the tannins smooth and not intense.
Blending the oak into the wine.