I hoped to develop an interesting discussion by inviting a distinguished cooper, a crack oak alternatives expert and a champion of micro-oxygenation to my table.

Fourth-generation Mâitre Tonnelier, Alain Fouquet, filled in as our barrel expert. Alain currently oversees his Alain Fouquet French Cooperage in Napa. He has 40 years' experience as a cooper, and is one of the true pioneers who changed the face of modern winemaking by developing barrel production and toasting techniques.

Philippe Michel began drinking wine at the age of six in his native Belgium. Arriving in California 10 years ago, he started in the wine business setting up exhibits at trade shows. Eventually he became vice president of sales and marketing for Tonnellerie Radoux in Santa Rosa, CA. In September 2004 he was named director of sales and marketing for Innerstave in Sonoma.

Michael Havens, owner of Napa's Havens Wine Cellars, went from the Boston Theological Institute to UCLA to UC Davis. Havens Wine Cellars was born in 1984, and for 20 years Michael has applied his religious dedication to heaven in a bottle.

Why are oak barrels so good for wine?

Alain First, there is the history. Oak was discovered to be the best wood long ago. Other woods were used, but historically oak was what people preferred. You've got a chemical reaction between the wine and the wood, and you've got the breathing of the wine through the wood. Wine and wood are two living substances; it just works. Oak makes wine taste and age better.

Michael Historically, barrels were just vessels, used since the time of Caesar. Our idea of what tastes good in wine has a long history of being influenced by this vessel. Now, when we analyze, we learn that it is not just a vessel, but it is a partner with the wine. It reacts.

Philippe I think what makes the wine better in the barrel is the magic of it—meaning it works. It's still very different from one wine to another. We can sell the same barrel to two or three different wineries, and you'll get two or three different results. Then there's the toasting. Originally barrels went on the fire just to be bent. It's only lately that we've started talking about the toasting.

Alain California started toasting in 1980, and it was only then that we really started to toast. Californians are very inquisitive people; they always need an explanation. Why? Why? Why? Why do you toast the barrels? The French never have any questions; they just say, "Give me the same barrels as last year."

What's most important in producing good barrels?

Alain I think first it's the selection of the wood, second it's the slow aging of the wood and third it's the toasting. You need to have the right raw material, and you need to get rid of some of the arch tannin.

And as a winemaker, that reputation depends on the consistency of the barrels. If the barrels are consistent and your representative says to you, "You're going to get the same barrel you had last year, unless you want to make changes and let's talk about those," and you can rely on that, voila! Then you have the magical human relationship. I've shrunk my coopers down to those I can rely on.

As barrel makers, you know you are making good barrels, but you are not winemakers. How do you know that the barrels you're making are best for the individual winemakers?

Philippe I think it depends on who you are, and I think it helps if you have a French accent. Somehow, when it comes to barrels a French accent makes you sound more authoritative. To answer your question, the best thing for me was really to listen. Listen to what the winemaker wants. To taste a lot and understand what the wood can add to the wine. You know, I understand when a winemaker says, "I want to respect the fruit. Bring me the wood that will just lift the wine." Others look for wood that will make their Chardonnay full of vanilla and tropical sweetness. And I find that working with alternatives, the challenge is even bigger.

Alain Sometimes you have winemakers asking you to do things that you know are not going to work; and I know if I do them, it will be a mistake. In the end, I am the barrel maker and I am responsible for the quality of the barrel, so sometimes I have to do it my way.

Philippe A lot has to do with the grain of the wood. Trees have two periods of growth: spring and summer. The spring growth has two characteristics. It gives much more aroma than summer growth, and it is much more porous. The summer growth has much more fiber content, and it seems more tannic with less aroma.

A tight grain wood is where the summer growth and the spring growth are of equal value. Wide grain is more like 70 percent summer growth and 30 percent spring growth; the summer growth is always bigger. So if you want a barrel that gives a lot of aromatic components, breathes a little bit more, then you go for the tight grain. You want that if you age your wine for a long time because you need time for the components to integrate.

If you want, for example, Pinot that is not over-oaked, I always suggest wide grain because you will probably leave it in the wood for a shorter time, and you don't want a lot of aromatic components from the oak.

Let's get into the alternatives. Does it make a difference which format of alternatives you use?

Philippe It makes a huge difference. I think my job is much tougher now than when I was selling barrels, to tell you the truth. With the alternatives, instead of putting wine in a barrel, we are putting oak into wine. If you mess up with alternatives, you mess up your wine—there is no turning back. You have to be extremely careful about what you use and how you use it.

Michael Wine reacts with the barrels, and that reaction changes over time. Oak provides wine with many elements. It increases color, tannin and anthrocyanin, and the Holy Spirit that marries all of these elements is oxygen, but older oak barrels don't seem to react with the wine in the same way.

Philippe That's why different alternatives accomplish different things. For me, I think staves in barrels with micro-oxygenation have shown the best results. The staves renew tannin and flavor in older barrels.

Alain It all gets back to the wood. The wood is made up of millions of little pores, cells, it's a living substance. When you put wine into barrels, there is a chemical reaction with these millions of little pores.in around. The untoasted chips are very lightly flavored.

Philippe And we've discovered that if you have grapes that have vegetative characteristics, which nobody really likes, the chips seem to help extremely well also.

Alain You know, if we talked to managers of modern barrel companies who are so concerned with money, they would think we were crazy. Most new managers in the barrel business have no idea what we are talking about.

If I'm a winemaker and I'm thinking of using alternatives, what should I watch out for?

Philippe First, watch out for the wood itself. There's no doubt. We used to talk about forests: Nevers, Allier, Troncais. To me, forget about it. It's all about species and grain. Check the grain of your wood. Tight grain for aromatic. Then ask how the wood is aged and for how long it is aged. Make sure it is outside to leach those harsh tannins. Then the toasting is key. And if they don't know or say that is privileged information, they have to tell you something about how it is toasted.

Most barrels are toasted on fire, on wood fire, but for toasting of the staves, we use convection ovens, which we think is the best way to do it. But the key is the length of the toasting process. We believe that low temperature for a long time is best. The key is what the winemaker thinks of it and if low-temperature toasting is what they like best.

Alain What you are saying is true. I believe you have a tremendous future, but...but the wine from these products has to be sold as soon as possible, within three or four years. You work for a tremendous business with a big future because people are buying young wine. But the wine made to last, it needs something different. That's why you need barrels.

Philippe, do you agree with Alain?

Philippe By my modest experience so far, I would say yes, but in 10 years I might say no. You know, five years ago alternatives were a bad word. I had so many customers, when I was selling barrels, telling me, "Alternatives, are you kidding, Philippe?" Now I work for an alternative company, and I see these guys have been experimenting with it for 10 years.

I wish further down the road I can say to someone making a $70 bottle of wine, "Hey, I've got the alternative that works for you." But what this technology should do is give us $12 to $15 bottles of very good wine. That's where I think alternatives can do a fabulous job.

Compared to wines aged for two years in the barrel and another year in the bottle, no, alternatives don't compare and may never. And my boss may kill me, but I wish never because I hope we never lose the magic of wine in a barrel.

Let's get to the micro-ox. What does this do? Why does it work? Where is it best applied?

Michael When you taste wine in a new barrel, as we've noted, there's something magical that happens, and it happens differently in a new barrel than in an old barrel. There's this great burst of exuberance, more color, more volume and more wine character. Then it starts to close up, you start to lose it, and you say, "Oh, it's reducing." Why does this evolution occur? Why aren't the improvements permanent? Well, wine is a living organism and it reacts, and the barrel is a living organism, and it reacts. They are both reactive, and you get good things going on; but after a while, it's missing the third thing that's the catalyst: the oxygen.

There's an evolution going on. The way I came to this is noting that this evolution makes us rack the wine all the time to bring oxygen into it so it opens up and stays fresh. I wondered if there was anrtainly true that as the grapes sit on the vine longer, you lose the reactivity of your phenolic material. So greater hang time makes the wine more immediately round and soft. We know this. But if you have another way to develop those tannins, and that means oxygen, you can choose within the possible structures that wine will have, going all the way from completely ruined to point X. That point X is different depending on how ripe that phenolic material was. We all want to make a gracious wine earlier in its life, and we have to do that because people are drinking wine younger. We need to think about the way our tools develop these structures.

Let's go around the table for one more question. Alain, why shouldn't I use oak alternatives? What's the downside?

Alain What Philippe is doing has a tremendous future. Ninety-five percent of customers want a wine that tastes good right now. But these wines from the oak alternatives cannot last more than three or four years. Many wineries now try to have reference wines. These are expensive wines that need barrel aging because they are meant to last. These are my barrel customers.

Philippe, why should people use oak alternative products?

Philippe For the moment, most of the people come to us because of the cost. What we all want is for more people to love wine. Sure, most wineries would love to have a wine elite product, but that's addressing a very small proportion of wine drinkers. We can help many more people get to wine at an affordable price. When I started in the cooperage business, I couldn't pronounce the word "alternative." Today, I can even spell it.

Michael Historically speaking, innovations always seem, at first, like revolutions, and in retrospect they seem like tradition.

Michael, how does the micro-ox technology help make good, high-end wine?

Michael We know that we make better wine by using micro-ox in tanks than we get from using neutral barrels. We still use new barrels, but we've stopped using old barrels. That's where we use the oxygen and alternatives. For instance, this 2000 Merlot Reserve, half of this was put into new barrels, 100 percent top barrels, and the rest of it was put into tanks and given careful oxygen. "Careful" is the important word.

The main thing I learned during this Winemakers on Wine interlude was that I love an afternoon of good food, fine wine and interesting conversation. All of the participants were enthusiastic, knowledgeable and entertaining. Personally, I'm a traditionalist. Give me an oak barrel. I'll rack the wine. I get off on making wine like they used to. That said, I have no doubt that "things, they are a'changing."

Oak alternatives, micro-oxygenation and scientific discoveries are going to change winemaking as we know it. These changes have been underway for many years and will occur faster than we can imagine.

It is my hope that winemakers, coopers and science can work together to make better wines at more favorable prices to entice more consumers into the joys of wine. If we can incorporate the new science and maintain the magic, then we will have something special. wbm