Gareth Skidmore lives in Burgundy, where he works as a translator and  teaches wine-business English to Burgundians. St-Romain - a sleepy little village of 240 souls, nestled beneath...

The film below shows how oak barrels are made, at Australia's only winery cooperage, at Yalumba in the Barossa Valley. (The photograph below shows an additional un-filmed stage, when barrels...

I've known Peter Sisseck ever since a very cold morning in December 1998. I used to take advantage of a long weekend we have in early December in Spain to go to Ribera del Duero with a friend...

Twenty years ago wine producers around the world measured their success by the number of new oak barrels they had in their cellars - preferably made from French oak, bought at vast expense from...

JT, a boutique winery in South Australia:   I read your article on oak chips being approved for use in the EU. For your information I would like to make a few comments....

Two plants are crucial to modern wine production: the vine, of course, and the oak tree. Yet it seems to me that the average wine drinker, and even the average wine enthusiast, has only...

Someone was asking about eastern European oaks recently in Your turn on purple pages . Coincidentally I have just received this report on a visit to fancy French coopers François...

Although it may seem from my previous reports on the Langhe (see Aldo Conterno and Giuseppe Rinaldi ) that I am trying to cram the recent history of Barolo into the easy dichotomy of 'new...

San Francisco barrel broker Mel Knox wrote this in 2001 and, in the noble spirit of recycling, has sent it for us to savour, in response to this question on members’ forum as to whether...

During 2008 the fine wine market has of course been affected by the general financial maelstrom. Many a banker and hedge fund manager has liquidated his fine wine investments, flooding the...

Bob Kreisher, GrapeCraft Wines, California: I would like to state, with all due respect, that you are mistaken about the role of [oak] chips and microx in the production of wine [in last...