Kristi Mayfield (00:00)

There is a quiet force in wine that never steps foot in the vineyard and yet it changes everything. It doesn't grow on a vine and it doesn't ferment in a tank. In fact it comes into play after the wine is made but before it ever reaches the bottle. It's not the grape, it's the barrel. Today we crack open the world of cooperage with a master cooper who shaped barrels on three continents

and crafts them for some of the most iconic winemakers across the globe. This isn't just about wood, it's about chemistry, craftsmanship, and the quiet power of oak wine barrels to transform a wine's destiny. buckle up because you are about to see how it's one of the most critical, creative, and misunderstood elements in winemaking.

Kristi Mayfield (01:11)

As a sommelier and wine educator, I have had plenty of my own aha moments, but today's conversation had quite a few more in store for me, one of which is how closely the art of barrel cooperage mirrors winemaking. From site selection to toasting techniques, it's a world with its own terroir, timing, and trials.

And trust me, after this conversation, you'll never swirl a glass of wine the same way again. So let's jump in.

Kristi Mayfield (01:40)

What better way to explore inside the wine barrel than to go straight to the source and enlist the expertise of a master cooper. My guest for today's episode has experienced barrel making from Australia to Northern California (French Oak, American Oak, Hungarian Oak). And he partners with winemakers across the globe from Burgundy to Texas with his diverse background and roots from Normandy to Britain that further enhances viticultural knowledge. It led him to where he is today in his role with Bernard barrels in California.

I'm so excited to welcome Guillaume Maugaies And Guillaume, I'm thrilled to have you here to share with our listeners some of those hidden secrets about what's really inside wine barrels and how that information can translate to their own wine journeys. So welcome, welcome.

Guillaume Maugeais (02:25)

Thank you, thank you Kristi thanks everybody for being with us today. Today we're gonna talk about barrels and we're gonna try to give you some insight and and debuke some facts about barrels. Barrels have been around since a very long time but barrels have three roles. Container, first to contain the wine and the liquid.

micro-oxygenation, a slow input of oxygen and for evolution and stabilization of the wine and exchange of tannin to structure the wine and to allow him to keep his color and to age through times. as well, flavor, texture, sweetness, spice, and so you have a lot of

different level to create a barrel and to create palate and a taste for the wine.

Kristi Mayfield (03:15)

Yeah, and you know, the creation of wine barrels doesn't really often get put into the spotlight, like, wine making and the evolution of wine. But you put some really nice parallels together between wine making and barrel making or cooperage Can you walk our listener through that concept?

Guillaume Maugeais (03:35)

Yes, it is very very similar as winemaking. Making wine barrels requires you have three big areas for barrel making exactly the same as winemaking because it's an agricultural product. First is the selection of the site. So if you talk about winemaking, selection of the vineyard, the site of the vineyard.

Being on a hill, being on a slope, it's always better You're going to have more complexity in your wine. The selection of the forest is quite important as well. In this case, the French oak that we use, Quercus cecil,

love alluvial soil, humid soil. So all the forests you're going to have, the quality forest, going to be around and nearby the Seine River and the Loire Valley River. That's the first thing, selection of sites. The second one, it's maturation and maturity. Maturity of the grapes, the correct level of sugar. We're going to turn into alcohol and

the phenolic maturity, which is the maturity of the seeds.

the seeds need to be browned if it's green you're gonna have like chewing a green piece of wood and it's exactly what's gonna happen in a barrel and in a if it's not aged properly and it's what's gonna happen in a wine if you don't pick your grapes properly so maturation maturity of the wood it's removing the tannin we just

We want tannin, but we want tannin at specific level and some tannin. You do not want green, vegetal tannin. So that's extremely important. And the last one, and you can have a relationship with heat, with temperature, fermentation.

And for barrels, we just toasting the barrels. So we do the Maillard reaction, which is a caramelization basically, because oak have fructose, have 15 % after two years aging, 15 % of humidity. So fructose plus water exposed over heat create caramelization. And you can.

decide different types of caramel, different types of flavors depending on the time exposed, the intensity of the temperature of the flame, etc. So it's very similar.

Kristi Mayfield (05:46)

Interesting. So where it comes from, how ripe or mature it is, and then the finishing process. Basically, interesting that it's sugar in grapes and sugar or glucose in the wood that ultimately impacts so significantly. Yeah.

Guillaume Maugeais (06:01)

Yeah. So the

maturation, it's very interesting because it's over the last 40 years, barrels have been here for a very long time. before it was more of a container. And it's with modern wine making that we developed the modern barrel making and the gain in quality.

And as well, that really fits the technical need, as I told you about stabilization of the color, stabilization of the tannin but the palette. if I give you an example, it's very simple. When the American wine industry

when the wine hit the masses, hit the shelves. Who was drinking wine? It was the baby boomers. Baby boomers start like in the 90s, they were 40 years old and a new beverage happened to show up in town and it was wine. But what they were drinking before, what was the palette education? It was, they were drinking bourbon.

which is huge into the American palette because it's So bourbon, beer and cocktail. And cocktail is very interesting because You have alcohol, sweetness, spice, and you do not pair cocktail with food.

if you want food, you need to have acidity. You beverage need to have acidity. So in the 80s and 90s, we were producing wine. We were really replicating the style of the cocktail. There was a new cocktail intent. was wine with high alcohol, high, a lot of sugar, sweetness, spice, a lot of oak, and you were not pairing. We were not putting the wine on the table. We were...

We were drinking wine before preparing the dinner, And then people, customers get exposed to a cooking show, traveled, get exposed to European wine. European winemaker came here and work in US wineries. So the style changed. And now what people want, it's fruit.

and acidity. so we rebalance. And I think American wine industry, even if it's difficult and tough now, because baby boomer population was supporting the industry, wine industry is dwelling. But I think we're gaining in maturity and more and more we're going to make wine we are perfectly balanced and we can compete with everybody.

going to age and that's what we're looking for wine. We want wine need to age.

Kristi Mayfield (08:30)

very interesting reference to I think you you called it the cocktail culture on a recent interview you had on inside wine making podcast and I love that reference and and even in as a wine educator that's not really a reference point I have

been exposed to as to how we got to those big packed with a punch, high tan and high alcohol reds and big full round kind of explosive white wines. So thank you. That's such an insightful view. And I hope we can get back to kind of the future of where that's all going here in a moment. But several times you talked about

aging and maturation and you know we we talk about that with wine all the time.

maturing wine, aging wine, but we don't really talk about that as far as the wine barrels themselves. Can you explain how important maturation is in barrels and kind of where that takes place in the creation, whether it's straight out of the forest to maturing or where do barrels mature and why does that matter?

Guillaume Maugeais (09:35)

Yeah.

Okay,

it's strategically important because the last 40 years, as I told you, we have the three parameters for quality. Site selection, maturation of wood, and toasting. BarronMaker, the last 30 years, have been making huge effort in selecting the correct forest and be able to replicate. That's one of the big differences with one-making. It's when you cut the forest to have exactly the same lots.

the same forest, the same parcel, you need to wait sixth generation, you need to wait 150 years at least. But maturation toast, we did a lot of tried consistency, tried to replicate always the same toast, industrialization of the toast. But the subject we really left behind was maturation. And maturation is extremely important. Because in a wine, you have to imagine the cell of the wood

and the cell of the wood have a layer of hemicellulose and on this cell is attached the tannin so you're going to have three sizes of tannin the big one the big tannin are going to give you vegetal and bitter taste the second one medium size it's going to give you structure

And that's what you're going to play with really. And the small one, it's going to give you integration. Integration is when you're drinking the wine and the wine have been aged in barrels, but you cannot feel the difference between the wine and the barrels. You don't have a hump, you don't have a step, you know, it's perfectly integrated. And these three tannins have a layer on the top of them.

of linine and it's encased. You cannot remove the tannin until you break down this top layer and you have different ways to remove that. So the first one you're going to use a fungus, you're going to develop a fungus which is naturally in the air. It's white rot fungus, Persecae versicolor, the latin name.

and that's naturally present in the air, it's what degrades the wood in forest. And so we're going to age for two years and this fungus is going to break down the top layer of feline and the rain is going to wash the tannin.

Kristi Mayfield (11:52)

So these are matured outside, completely exposed to the elements. Okay.

Guillaume Maugeais (11:54)

Outside, completely

naturally, we do not spray any fungus, we do not inoculate, it's outside. And we give, on the top of that, mechanically, the wood, when the wood arrives, is around 74, 75 % humidity. And me, mechanically, to process it, I need 15 % humidity. So I need to drop around 60 % of the humidity of the wood. So what I do, it's I...

create a pallet, I stack the wood in a certain way where I got layers and the layers have a gap between each layer, it's a gap and airflow gonna dry my wood. But tight enough to create humidity environment, we're gonna help the fungus to develop. So the first thing it's fungus, used by 98 % of the coopers.

And we usually age for two years because you need two years of humid season to wash the wood. And the life expectancy of this fungus is two years, 24 months. You can push to 36 if you want less tannin. So if you have a wine full of fruits, you want a fruity wine, red fruit, express the fruity wine, for the fruit in the wine, you're going to usually go for 36 months aging.

That's the first way. The second way is we use the UV light of the sun. So we stack the palette, we stack the wood on a different way, only with a full side. The palette is completely hollow inside and the sun is to touch all the wood. And that's called photo oxidation. And the photon of the light breaks down the line.

And this system have a lot of advantage. It's, you do not need like the fungus specific temperature for the fungus to develop. The UV light is there every day. And that's very interesting because it's a system we exist since a very long time, but it's been refreshed and it's fitting perfectly the modern palette, the palette of

The palette of the customers of today, we want fruit and we want to express floral characteristic, for example. The third one, it's steaming the barrels to bend the barrel. It's mechanical. We're going to put the barrel which is not yet closed, not formed. We're going to put down a steam chamber, steam the wood, and the wood mechanically is very soft. And we're to be able to bend it.

It's very interesting. Your few cooperators use this system and give great results. And for example, that fit perfectly wine from, for example, Texas, South California. Why? Because in Texas, in South California, in Spain, South of Spain, you already have the structure. You already have the tannin.

It's so warm that the tannin and the sugar are high you don't need another layer of structure. What you need is to the acidity. So not having a bar will impact too much the wine and something we're going to lift the fruit. So this system, photo oxidation and steam is very interesting. we're doing research.

on a fourth process and that's been used in a navy actually, in a shipyard drying wood in carpentry as well. You just submerge the wood into water and you're creating an osmosis and the tannin has been extracted of the wood, sap and tannin. And so because the palette is changing, people want less impacting barrels, we're going to use this system.

And one of the big advantage could be, we hope, that could accelerate the aging. And in this case, reduce the price of the barrels because barrels now is quite expensive. And you adding to seven dollars per barrels as a cost just to cover the barrels.

So it will be very interesting if we can find a way to reduce this time and this price.

Kristi Mayfield (15:57)

It's great to see that something so traditional as barrel making is still going through a kind of a genesis of innovation. But I want to tap into the element of tannins because they are difficult to understand. I mean, they're in the grape seeds, they're in the stems, they're in the skins. But you've tapped into elements of barrels themselves and tannins in the barrels. putting that together, can you educate

Guillaume Maugeais (16:13)

and you're welcome.

Kristi Mayfield (16:24)

the listener on how does barrel fermentation or barrel aging and the type of wood, influence tannins in the wine itself. So what is that reaction and how does a barrel impact tannins that are naturally found in the grapes and in the wine?

Guillaume Maugeais (16:25)

Of course.

Okay, so to start we need to understand what tannin does to the wine. have to, the listener need to imagine a triangle on a sheet of paper, a triangle. And you have, that's your wine. And you have three parameters to respect. You have alcohol, so sugar, alcohol, acidity, tannin. Okay.

And you need to have a balanced wine, you need to have the dots in the middle. The right amount of tannin, the right amount of alcohol and the right amount of acidity. If from the the 90s, a lot of tannin, a lot of alcohol, but the acidity is gone. So you're going to drink one glass and it's going to be too rich, you know, it's like a chocolate without any sugar. It's too bitter, you know, it's like...

So the tannin of the wood gonna transfer the alcohol. Once you finish your fermentation, You're gonna barrel your wine. So what it does, the alcohol is a natural solvent and gonna extract the tannin. And so you're gonna reinforce, you're gonna rebalance the wine. Imagine that before you have...

in your triangle, the dot is more towards alcohol and acidity and you need to rebalance the, put the dot more in the center towards the tannin. But after it's like, like everything, it's an ingredient for a recipe, berries are an ingredient for a recipe. It's exactly, it's exactly if you're putting, you're preparing something, a dish.

and you're not having any salt. Okay? And then you put in the right amount of salt or the right amount of wood. You're going to rebalance your dish. But if you put in too much, it's going to be too salty and you need to be able to just use the correct barrels with the correct amount of aging. And that's what is changing now. The pallet is reshifting.

because we use in the past for me, for my personal palette, it was way too much work.

Kristi Mayfield (18:37)

Yeah.

I agree. agree. And I love the cooking and recipe references because that makes it really easy for someone to understand it. we also think about other elements that you deal with every day that we're maybe not as attuned to. I mean, we have these images of wine cellars that traditionally have your standard 225 liter wine barrel (think standard shape, standard barrel racks). And that's what

Guillaume Maugeais (18:44)

to help.

Kristi Mayfield (19:04)

our listeners are familiar with, but you make innumerable different shapes and sizes of barrels that have a very different impact on the wine itself. So how important is primarily size, but also shape. And how do you guide winemakers in selecting the right size for the varietal or either other elements, even like the terroir and vineyards that we've talked about already.

Guillaume Maugeais (19:11)

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. So that's very interesting question because as I say, barrel are here to improve or correct the wine. it's a wine just need a bit of lift, you know, need a bit. It's exactly if like you are being a very nice looking person and choosing the right clothing, gonna make it make him or her look.

Put all the advantage, know. Barrel is exactly like this. It's finding the right input, the right amount of...

So you improve or you correct. If a wine, for example, I'm going to give you a very simple example. A young vineyard, let's say three, four years old vineyard, the roots haven't had the ability to go very, very deep yet. So every time that the roots cross a different layer of soil, you have different minerals. So you have different complexity in a wine. So it's why.

all vineyards have a lot of complexity and are usually well balanced. Young vineyard, the case exactly actually in Texas, and wine maker Benedict Rhyne fantastic wine maker, was looking to try my barrels, Bernard barrels. And she told me, give me two barrels. Okay, Benedict, but hang on, what for?

Because it's exactly like choosing a pair of shoes, we're not adapted to the task, know? You're not going running with heels and vice versa. So you need to understand what the one maker wants, where you want to land, what's the fruit, what's style, what's the soil, et cetera. So Benedict asked me two barrels, and she told me it's going to be a very young vineyard, second harvest.

and sangiovese So sangiovese is not a huge, it's more a red fruit, floral red fruit style. And because it's very young, don't have a lot of structure and do not have a lot of length. So you drink it and very quickly the flavor disappeared. So I told her, look, I'm going to tell you aloud what I'm thinking and how I approach this wine.

The quality of this sangiovese is red fruit. You need to keep that. But because it's very light in structure, you cannot have big barrels. So we're going to choose a barrel with lower level of tannin. So for me, for example, it's a chimney stacking where we use the UV light to remove tannin. Very delicate. It will not bring a lot of structure, but it's going to lift the fruit. And I told her after...

Now we need to choose the extraction and the profile with the toast.

The toast, it's exactly like cooking a steak. It's exactly the same. We're wood like people cook steak. the tannin in the wood, will be the blood in the meat. More you expose the tannin, the barrels through heat over time or intensity, more you're degrading the tannin, more you're removing from it, more you're destroying the tannin. Exactly if you're cooking a steak well done,

You will not have any pink or blood left in the steak. It's exactly the same. Tannin helps you to improve the structure, but as well helps you to express acidity. And I said, look, I think your wine will not have too much tannin. We should select a barrel with low tannin, but with tannin still. And it's exactly cooking. And I say,

What we should do, because it's going to be short, we should do a long light, so no flame, but extended over time. And it's exactly like cooking a slow-cooked piece of meat. you're cooking toasting barrels, you can work on spice, texture like velvetyness, a slow-cook.

piece of meat when it's velvety, mushy, failing of the bone type of structure, you can apply that to barrels. And so we did it. That worked very well. So for example, if I go to Napa, you have on a hill of Napa in land, a village called Anguin. And it's a old volcano. So it's a volcanic soil, which is completely different soil than the valley. The valley, it's a riverbed.

So volcanic soil give usually a lot of structure. It's very tannic wine. So this wine in Anguine do not need a lot of structure. So that go very well. But because the vineyard are more established or older, I choose a toast we can be a bit more impacting medium plus. And as well it's a style, know, American palate, love spice, love something round,

a bit of sweetness, so medium plus is well adapted to this Napa wine. And the wine can handle it because the vineyard is old.

Kristi Mayfield (23:52)

so the relationship between you as the cooper and the winemaker is super important in the ultimate style. So I'd love to ask the flip side of what you just talked about and what is like the worst decision a winemaker can make when it comes to selecting the barrels for their wine?

Guillaume Maugeais (24:09)

⁓

not being open mind and having a bias and it gonna be, I've been to wineries where they were very high-end wineries where they just work very well, are extremely precise into the site selection, into the varietal, into the rootstock and exposure to the, you know, southwest, north,

West, you know, like it was a rainer hill and all the different orientation towards the Sun and exposure and the guy is selecting each parcel in different tank and it's very precise but after he's taking only one type of barrels from one barrel maker which is very and very impacting barrel maker and you're like why why why it's like Trying to do a complex meal and having only salt, you know, and that's it's terrible. But as well

Kristi Mayfield (24:37)

aspect

Guillaume Maugeais (25:01)

I've been in your previous question, I didn't talk about shape. Shape is extremely important because we've been talking about the style of wood, the aging, the toast. But shape is very important because you have two parameters. You have the ratio of volume surface area and contact. So a barrel, let's say the barrel is one to one. If you go for about twice bigger,

you have 0.5 of ratio, etc. So you have the amount of tannin extracted per gallon is 2.1 or 2.05. That's the first parameters. Because of the palate is changing, we want less impacting wine, less oaky wine. Barrels, bigger barrels are becoming more more popular and it's extremely exciting. But the second thing,

We were talking about texture.

When we produce wine, when we're the wine, red and white, we have the cadaver of the yeast, your fermentation is over, and the cadaver of the yeast saddled in. That's called the lees And the lees in Burgundy, traditionally in a white wine, it's a traditional wine making, it's what gives the glory of Burgundian wine making.

we do a batonage, a baton in French is a stick. So we put a stick into the bunghole and we shake a bit the lees and we put the lees in suspension. And the contact of the wine with the lees gives this roundness, this butteriness. If you do a lot of batonage, like some American, Californian Chardonnay wine maker have been doing way too much, you have extremely buttery Chardonnay.

And the problem is not the barrels, the problem is the palette In the US, usually we have a big pendulum, we go very extreme one way and really extreme the other way. Now, because of this crazy, burly Chardonnay that everybody despises, we're going more the other way. But you still have some people who like it and it's not bad, it's your style, but the style is changing.

And so if you incorporate bigger barrels, you have a surface area with bigger. And I'm talking for example for red. for example, a syrup, we can be very spicy, like peppery, beautiful red fruit. If you have a big barrel, you have less oak impact So you're going to have less, you do not.

you will not cause this beautiful flavor of white pepper for example but the lees the weight of because it's a bigger volume you have a bigger weight in the large format and the weight gonna push on the lees and gonna create a very gentle rand feeling in the mouth bit more randy and that's very interesting and so i recommend that quite a lot

But as well, example, barrel-makers are always here to give solutions. And that's my philosophy. so there was in last year, I was working with a very good estate, and they have a project in Paso Robles. And the winemaker so they're using a custom crush. So they're renting space in a winery. And the winemaker was looking to...

She told me I want to have more oak, but I can't because I'm limited in space because my budget don't allow me to rent another row of barrels, like in a building. And I told her what you could do instead doing a 225 liters, you do a 275 liters. So we gain 11 gallon,

And so that's an economical solution. And that's great, you know. But, and just to finish about shape and volume, the wine do not stand still in barrels. The wine always rotating. It's moving on a cycle. And so if you have,

It's called the golden number, the Fibonacci number. And it's the perfect balance, the perfect numbers in nature. So it's the same. It's why a shell of the shape or like a sunflower seeds are set up like this in a flower. And so we have created some cooperage, for example, Hermitage cooperage have created barrels. We respect exactly

the Fibonacci number in the dimension. And therefore, winemaker we love to work with biodynamic, for example, it's a great tool to have.

Kristi Mayfield (29:21)

we've talked all of this conversation around oak barrels, but...

oak influence doesn't always come from a barrel when it comes to winemaking. There are things called oak chips, oak staves that impart some oak influence. Can you educate our listener on, what is your thought about oak chips and stave? What function do they serve? And I guess really when you talked about every barrel can add about five to $7 per bottle.

to the cost of wine, how do oak chips and staves play into that as well? So kind of two parts of the question.

Guillaume Maugeais (29:56)

All right,

that's a very good question. in the wine industry, have three tiers. You have the lower tier of wine, the medium grade, and the premium wine. Only 2 % of the volume of the wine produced in the world goes through barrels. So it's not a lot.

So you do have in your price point, selling your wine, you have only two options, unoak or age in barrels. And so it's all you have a bottle, let's say a bottle at $25. Well, $25 unoaked And so if you want to reach a different public or different classification, you add oak

But straight away, you're jumping from 25 to 32 dollars. So it's a big gap, you a big jump. And what we discovered, we could add chips which come exactly from the same trees and usually are aged exactly the same. It's stacked outside and aged for two years. So you have the fungus, we remove the tannin, et cetera.

And so that allows you way more flexibility. So that can be in different shapes. That can be in chips, like mulch you put in your garden. That can be in little cube, you know, an inch by an inch. That can be in long stick. Usually you put that in your stainless tank. So these chips are, for me, very good tools. You're going to...

you're gonna have exchange of tannin and flavor but you're not gonna work with what we talk about the shape and the the lees and less and no macro-oxygenation so you have flavor and tannin so it's why it's not it's not exactly the same

If you put in front of me two wine, I might be able to find which I've been aging chips and which I've been aging barrels, but it's not that easy. I have to be really honest, chips do a very good job. And the big advantage for me, it's on the top of a very low price. It's a very good tool to readjust quickly. If, for example,

four months before racking and bottling, you taste the barrels and you're like, you know, I would like more sweetness or I would like more tannin or I would like more freshness. Boom, chips gonna integrate way quicker. Where barrels you need at least 11 months. And so chips, it's a very good tool. And you have now three categories, wine without oak, wine with oak, wine with barrels.

So it's not a, it's chips in wine. For me, it's not a curse word, but you need as well to use it on the correct way. know, it's a tool, use it the correct way. Look the ultra premium wine. Nobody use chips. Everybody use barrels.

but you have very correct wine. We are made with ships and congratulations to them.

Kristi Mayfield (32:50)

Awesome.

Well, I want to finish with one last question and related to wine after fermentation or and whatever post fermentation processes the winemaker chooses, the wine still is somewhat flawed. That your triangle you described is the dots not in the center. Can barrels truly improve the wine if it is flawed? Can they bring it back into something that is

Guillaume Maugeais (33:06)

Yeah.

Kristi Mayfield (33:17)

a good wine, a great wine.

Guillaume Maugeais (33:18)

Yes,

you know you have a saying that you're gonna win a horse race with a donkey if you don't have good wine you're not gonna go really much anywhere that's the first thing but you correcting you know if the wine if the wine is a bit grippy if the tanana a bit grippy if it's lacking a bit of complexity if it's

you know, like a bit disbanded, like the wine don't fit. Imagine you have to visualize in 3D what's happening in your mouth and the feeling you have. And if your wine is bit too linear or if the wine is a bit go in all direction barrels, I like to say frame it, give a structure.

So that's very important. You frame the wine. You give direction to the wine. And after you just, you can add complexity. You will add complexity. But for example, if the wine is diluted, if it's been raining or too much irrigation, barrel not going to improve anything. You're going to cover with wood, After just covering with wood, it's not a bad, bad thing.

just need to be done in good proportion. That's all. ⁓

Kristi Mayfield (34:32)

Yeah, so it's

not the be all end all answer, but it can take maybe an okay wine to maybe a good wine.

Guillaume Maugeais (34:37)

That's it. Yeah, yeah.

of maturity, if your wine is too green, you can cover the greenness with a good barrel. So you're going to improve, but you're not going to make a trophy wine, high quality wine with a wine that has issues. That's it.

Kristi Mayfield (34:54)

So I've learned so much, Guillaume, from talking today. First of all, I love your, the reference of, wine making and barrel making have so many parallels, and you've walked us through everything from where it comes from, or the terroir to the maturity, et cetera. Not all barrels are created equal in how they influence the wine, and that's really important. And I'm really aligned with the shift you talked about from those, big, bold cocktail culture wines to

to really focusing on fruit and acidity. And as a listener, you should be really seeing more of that, although there are still some of those wines that exist. As Guillaume was saying, the trend is moving more toward the pallet of fruitiness, acidity, minerality, things like that. And then, of course, the element of cost. And I really appreciate the fact that you didn't bash chips and staves because I think we feel like those are kind of cheater.

ways to make wine, but the points that you brought forward on why they are so relevant because only 2 % of wines are really go through any kind of barrel fermentation or aging. I think when we talk about oak wines, we're really more talking about those that have been influenced by chips or staves. So I have completely changed my perspective on that process thanks to your insights. So thank you for that.

Guillaume Maugeais (36:12)

You're really welcome.

But you know, just to finish with the chips, we have in California a big issue, which it's a smoke taint due to fires. And we're starting the fire season as we talk now. And if you grapes just before half rest have been impacted by smoke, by a nearby fire, chips is one of the way to remove, act like a sponge.

At a certain level, you know, at certain level, you're not going to eradicate completely smoke taint if your wine has been soaking in smoke. But it's a very good tool. And thanks for the chips.

Kristi Mayfield (36:47)

Well, I this has been a huge lesson. you have just taken us inside the barrel deep inside the barrel and taught us so much about the influence of barrels and all of the things that go behind it that I've never been exposed to before. So I can't thank you enough for that. It's been a true pleasure having you on the show today.

Guillaume Maugeais (37:05)

Thank

you. Thank you so much. That was great. I hope I educated a bit few people.

Kristi Mayfield (37:09)

You did. Thumbs up and cheers.

Guillaume Maugeais (37:12)

Thank you guys!

Kristi Mayfield (37:17)

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