Casks raised and fired to order

Fire is the ingredient.

We raise casks in French and American oak and fire them over an oak fire. Nearly everything a barrel gives back comes from this.

Order a cask
02

Forty minutes over flame.

The staves are already bent. The fire is not there to shape them. It is there to cook the wood, and how far it is taken is the whole of what you are buying.

40 minMedium toast, by eye and by ear

03

Oak, iron, and nothing else.

  • No glue anywhere in a cask
  • No nails and no screws
  • Six hoops and the swelling of the wood
04

The char is a filter.

Below the black there is a band of toasted wood a few millimetres deep, and that band is what the spirit or the wine actually meets.

Everything below happens before a cask leaves

Drag the edge

What forty minutes does to oak.

The same wood on both sides. Pull the handle across and you are looking at the difference between a stave as it arrives and a stave as it leaves, which is the only decision most customers actually have to make.

Air dried oak
After the fire
Air dried oakAfter the fire

Six operations, one of them irreversible.

SplittingOak is split along the grain rather than sawn, so no cut crosses a vessel and the cask holds.
SeasoningThe staves stand outside for two to three years and the rain takes the harshness out of them.
RaisingThirty odd staves are stood in a hoop and drawn together into the shape of a cask.
FiringOver an oak fire, watched, until the inside is where the customer asked for it.
CrozingThe groove that takes the head is cut, and the cask is only as tight as that groove.
TestingFilled with hot water under pressure. Anything that weeps goes back to the bench.
Specification

Sizes and toasts.

Barrique225 litres
Hogshead300 litres
Puncheon500 litres
ToastsLight to heavy
OakFrench and American
Seasoning24 to 36 months
Lead time16 weeks
MinimumSix casks
Asked every time

Before you order six of them.

How do I choose a toast?

Send us what is going in it. Light toast leaves the oak forward and is usually wrong for anything already oaky; heavy toast pushes the wood back and brings out the sweetness in the char. If you cannot decide, order the six split three and three and taste them against each other in a year.

French or American oak?

American oak is wider grained and gives more of itself faster, which suits spirit and shorter elevages. French oak is tighter and slower and costs about half as much again. Neither is better and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling one of them.

Can you refire an old cask?

We can shave and refire a cask two or three times before the staves are too thin to hold the croze. It costs about a third of a new one and it comes back a different cask, which some people want and some people very much do not.

Why sixteen weeks?

Because the staves have to be dry and we will not shorten that. The raising, firing and crozing take a week. The other fifteen are the wood sitting outside in the rain, which is the part nobody can hurry.

Enquire

Tell us what is going in it.

The liquid, the volume and roughly when you need them. We will come back with a toast we would recommend and what it costs, usually within two days.