The Barrel That Could Save A Forest

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Arts, Science, History, Food

4.7 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bourbon has to be aged in barrels, by law; whiskey usually spends years in barrels, by custom; and between 20-30 percent of wine spends some time in one. And almost all of those wooden vessels are made from just two kinds of tree: American white oak and French oak. This episode, we tell the story—and try the whiskey—of the distiller and the barrel-maker who, together, are figuring out how to use the huge, elegant, native oak of the Pacific Northwest to create new flavor, and, in the process, restore an ecosystem that has nearly vanished. Along the way, we figure out the science behind how a barrel affects the taste of what you sip, and we trace the trajectory of barrels from their pinnacle, as the go-to container for everything from fish to petroleum, to their current niche status. Finally, we explore why oak became the default wood for barrel-making—and meet the coopers experimenting with different woods, and an entirely new flavor universe for booze. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is what we're getting out today.
0:06.7	This is our order.
0:08.0	This is for Sazarack and Kentucky.
0:12.2	These are all whiskey barrels and they need to get shipped out today.
0:15.4	There's 100 of them.
0:16.4	And we still have like 40 to finish.
0:24.5	Barrels I've tasted delicious wine and whiskey and beer and more that were aged in them,
0:28.9	but I'd never seen them actually being built before.
0:31.0	But on our first reporting trip, post-vaccination, we headed straight to Oregon Barrel Works.
0:37.0	It's one of the few cooperages left in America.
0:39.4	A cooper is the first new-makes barrels, so the barrel factory is technically a cooperage.
0:45.0	Bono's Factoid, if you meet someone with the last name Cooper, one of their distant ancestors
0:50.1	probably made barrels.
0:51.7	And this episode is indeed all about barrels.
0:54.8	You're listening to Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science
0:57.9	and history.
0:58.9	I'm Cynthia Graber, and I'm Nicola Twilly, and yes, it's an episode about barrels, but it's
1:03.6	also the story of the small team working to save a unique western landscape by making
1:09.5	barrels.
1:10.5	With whiskey in them, some of the best barrels around do have whiskey in them, in my opinion.
1:14.5	On our way down this barrel rabbit hole, we discovered a lot of weird stuff.
1:19.2	Like why barrels are so important to creating the flavors of our favorite wines in whiskey,
	...

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