One of the requirements of my oenology studies in France is a three-month winemaking internship. I chose to do mine with Didier Barral, a Languedoc winemaker who I’ve written about several times before on this blog. With his cows roaming freely in the vineyard, close to 50 pigs free-ranging nearby, and a beyond-biodynamic biodiversity philosophy, Barral makes a vin de terroir that is alive with the spiciness of the garrigue scrub-brush and minerality of the shale that characterize Faugères wines. This fourth segment of my winemaking report deals with an environmentally-friendly method of keeping wooden stakes from rotting.
There's a fine line between just burning the stakes tips and having a bonfire.
I’m in the process of writing a report about my wine-making internship, and it’s extremely difficult to capture, in just 50-or-so pages the wealth of knowledge that my Maître de Stage, Didier Barral, shared with me. He had dozens of tips, in the wine cellar, about protecting the wine from bacteria and oxygen, or about demonstrating the best way to clean the tanks, hoses and other winemaking equipment.
Out in the vineyard, he would often use his neighbors’ vines to draw comparisons between the organic viticulture techniques that he used and an approach that relied on chemicals or a soil management approach that was more about saving money or time than increasing biodiversity. These often-impromptu pedagogical lessons were enlightening and eye opening, and I’m sure that they’ll be the highlight of my report.
One morning, during the last week of my internship, Maître Barral led me around back of the garage used to store the domaine’s tractors to a large pile of wooden stakes. The stakes were piled in a neat row, bundled into groups of 20 with bailing wire. Nearby was a pile of grape vines that had been pulled up to make way for new vines. With a few pieces of paper that he produced from his jacket pocket, he ignited the vines, which caught fire quickly.
A quick plunge into water puts out the flames.
The thought that we might be having barbecue for lunch went through my head, but, no, we were going to prepare, he said, “les piquets” (“stakes” in English) used to attach young vines, protecting them from the fierce Languedoc winds.
The point of this exercise, he explained, was to burn the tips of the stakes. They were made from chestnut wood—naturally resistant to rot, but by burning them, he told me, they would last twice as long as untreated stakes. Using “pressure treated” lumber, or wood that had been dipped in creosote or some other chemical treatment, was out of the question, as the chemicals would leach into the ground.
It’s dozens of little details like this that go into preserving the ecological balance needed to produce exceptional organic grapes. Barral said that he learned about the carbonized stake tips trick from older vignerons (winemakers). No only does it prevent rot, but it also dissuades insects from attacking the wood. I don’t think that it would work on garden furniture, but it certainly would be worth trying on tomato plant stakes.
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I would love to read your final report one of these days. Please give the Barral clan my very best.
I’ll do that, Timothy. I’m sure that these “Winemaking 101″ stories bring back memories for you. If you can stand the “franglais” that I’ll need to use to write my report, I’ll be glad to send you a copy. And to answer a question that you sent me quite some time ago, the 2009 Léon Barral wine is excellent (evidence that you did well). I hope that some of it makes its way to Portland (if that’s where you are living now). A bientôt.