GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

by Cortney Casey

by Jessica Zimmer

Much of Gina Shay’s life revolves around wine, but it wasn’t always that way.

The Oakland Township resident’s foray into the field was purely an accident — or perhaps serendipity. While working in sales in 2002, Shay received a cold-call from a wine cork company recruiter, and “I figured it would beat the heck out of selling office equipment,” she jokes.

“It didn’t take me long to learn that working with wine is more than a job: It’s a lifestyle, and it’s a passion industry,” she says. “People are often drawn to wine as enthusiastic consumers or as a second ‘dream’ career, so most people in wine production are happy to come to work every day, which is really refreshing.

“The ‘wine world’ is small and social, which makes it easy to surround oneself with people who are also passionate about wine,” she adds. “Most of them, like me, are excited about the endless learning opportunities that wine careers present.”

Two decades later, Shay is more enmeshed in the wine industry than ever. She left the wine cork business in 2016 to launch her own company, Petraea Plus. The company’s focus was wine barrels specifically geared toward the needs of coolerclimate emerging wine regions, like Michigan, and the barrels of Tonnellerie Cadus were among brands she represented as an agent.

In 2019, Shay joined Cadus full time, after finding that their products demanded the bulk of her time at Petraea due to their suitability for cool-climate wine regions. (In 2022, the Cadus sales team merged with that of a sister cooperage, AnA Cooperage. Together, the boutique cooperages produce about 27,000 barrels annually for clients in most of the winemaking regions worldwide, including areas of North and South America, Europe, Asia and South Africa.)

Even Shay’s free time is consumed by wine: After years working with the Michigan Wine Collaborative — a nonprofit organization that supports wineries, grape growers and more in the state’s wine industry — she became the group’s president in January 2022.

Shay’s position in business development at Cadus and AnA Cooperages North America has allowed her to witness firsthand the intricate and dramatic process required to create wine barrels, as well as their practical applications in myriad wineries. Below, she shares some of the behind-the-scenes scoop on how wine barrels are made, how critical they are to the industry, why Michigan wine matters, and more.

Q: How did you get into barrels specifically?

While selling corks was certainly interesting — the cork forests in Portugal and the cork production process are amazing sights — when the company I was working with built a cooperage, I realized right away that oak was much more a part of the winemaking process. Tasting directly from tanks and barrels with winemakers before the wine is finished, listening to what they’re trying to achieve with a particular wine, and then making suggestions about what might help them get there — whether it’s with my barrels or other options — is really exciting.

Q: Tell us about the impact of barrels on oaked wines.

First and foremost, barrels play a role in oxygen exchange, which aids in development of the wine, and tannin, a naturally occurring phenolic compound in the wood that imparts structure to the wine, both of which affect the way the wine feels in your mouth — weight, texture, etc. Second, barrels can influence the flavors that are perceived in the wine, from spice to vanilla to butterscotch/caramel to nuttiness to perceived sweetness.

Oak has gotten a bad rep in the last few years because the pendulum has swung the other way from the very heavily oaked, high alcohol wines that were in vogue in the 1980s and ‘90s. While winemakers are favoring less oak flavor impact than in years past, most of them are still using oak barrels to influence wine structure and texture, usually with a combination of new and previously-filled barrels to highlight the unique characteristics of their fruit, their site and their region.

Most European oak comes from carefully managed forests in France as well as Central and Eastern Europe. American white oak comes from several places in the U.S. and Canada, including, but not limited to, Kentucky, Missouri, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Virginia/Mid-Atlantic, and up into Ontario.

French, Eastern European, and American oak each lend different structure and flavor characteristics to the wine … There are very different costs associated with the different oaks, too, which also influences purchasing decisions. Because of the nature of the grain, French and European oak must be carefully split along the grain so the staves are liquid-tight, but that incurs a lot of manual labor costs. American oak is much denser and can be quarter-sawn, so the process is much more mechanized, efficient and cheaper. French oak barrels can cost from $800-1,200 on average, while American oak barrels cost an average of $400-600.

There is a whole process of selecting the right trees, which I’ll skip in the interest of time, but rest assured that the professionals who work in the strictly managed oak forests, scoping out the trees that will make the best wine barrels, are very skilled people. Once the trees/logs are selected, they are taken from the forest to the stave mill, where the logs are cut into rough barrel staves, head stave material, and scrap (which can end up as oak chips, cubes, etc.).

The staves are sorted by different criteria — sometimes by tightness of grain which controls the rate of oxygen exchange, sometimes by specific forest — and seasoned for approximately two to four years. This means that the staves sit in the open elements at the stave mill or the cooperage, ultimately affecting how the resulting barrels impact the wine. Cadus in Burgundy and AnA is in southwest France, near the Pyrenees Mountains, so you can imagine the di seasoning. Definitely not an immediate return on investment.

Once the rough staves are fully seasoned, they are cut into the final stave shapes that will end up in a barrel. After cutting, the staves are manually arranged into a “rose,” which are basically just staves held together at one end prior to bending and toasting. The “rose” is rolled over a fire so that it can be warmed and bent, little by little, into a familiar barrel shape.

Once the warmed staves have formed a barrel, that barrel is toasted to winemaker specifications; common toasts are light, medium, medium plus, heavy and custom toasts.

The rough barrels are then sanded to buff out any scuffs and to render them aesthetically pleasing—a lot of whiskey barrels seem to skip this step!—and they are stored and ready for shipment to wineries.

Q: There’s a lot of terminology involved in the world of wine barrels. What are some “must-know” vocab words?

Basic barrel vocab includes the “top” and “bottom” of the barrels as if they were standing on end: barrel heads. The metal rings that hold the barrels together are called the hoops; the middle of the barrel, where the most volume is, is called the bilge (like a boat!) … Toast (light, medium, medium plus, heavy) usually refers to a wine barrel, while char (Char 1-4) usually refers to a barrel that will hold whiskey or something other than wine. “Barrique” is a common term for 225L Bordeauxshaped barrels; “pièce” is a common term for 228L Burgundy-shaped barrels; and “puncheon” is often used for 300-600L barrels.

Q: As the president of the Michigan Wine Collaborative, what would you want consumers to know about Michigan wines?

I am very passionate about Michigan wine, and very fortunate to work alongside and serve the very passionate people here who grow the grapes and make the wine. I would love for consumers to be as demanding about knowing where their wine comes from as they are about the origin of their food, and to understand that when they buy a bottle of Michigan wine, they are supporting local families and local businesses.

There is a world-class wine region in Michiganders’ backyard that many people write off to the cherry wine and sweet Riesling of 30 years ago. We do make lovely versions of both of those types of wine, but Michigan is so much more, from the wine varieties commonly seen on most restaurant menus to grapes that may be new to consumers but also make delicious and fun wines. I’d encourage anyone curious about wine to taste Michigan. For behind-the-scenes footage of how barrels are made, click here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/aibmp75vaouoxn4/ Video%20Dec%2009%202022%2C%2010%2016%2037%20PM.mov?dl=0

Cortney Casey is a certi fi ed sommelier and co-founder of MichiganByTheBottle.com, a website and online community that promotes the entire Michigan wine industry. She’s also co-owner of Michigan By The Bottle Tasting Room, tasting rooms operated in partnership with multiple Michigan wineries, located in Shelby Township, Royal Oak and Auburn Hills. Contact her at cort@michiganbythebottle.com.

By Erin Marie Miller

There’s a new brand in town – and it’s on a mission to tell the world what Michigan’s wine industry has to offer.

In anticipation of Michigan Wine Month in May, Taste Michigan – the brand behind the Michigan Wine Collaborative’s new marketing platform centered around Michigan’s wine industry – is launching a new campaign this spring focused on taking a fresh look at Michigan’s wine scene. Funded through a $125,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture specialty crop block grant administered by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the campaign will tell the stories behind the state’s wine industry while educating a new generation of wine lovers about everything Michigan’s local industry brings to the table.

“The Taste Michigan brand is focused on … not only Michigan wine grapes, but how diverse our state is as far as the soils, the climates, and the variety of both vinifera and cold-hardy, disease-resistant varieties that we can actually bring to market,” says Brian Lillie, vice president of the Michigan Wine Collaborative, the organization responsible for Taste Michigan. Lillie also chairs the nonprofit’s marketing committee and works as Director of Hospitality and Distribution at Chateau Chantal Winery in Traverse City.

For Lille, the Taste Michigan brand is all about storytelling – and making sure people get a taste of what Michigan’s wine industry is about in the process.

“We are arguably the fourth largest grape growing state in the nation. We're also, arguably, depending on the year, around the ninth-largest wine producing state in the nation. And we certainly aim to be the pinnacle of the Midwest in wine production. And how we're going to do that is by telling people our stories,” Lillie says.

The making of a campaign

To bring the new brand – and its introductory advertising campaign – to life for wine lovers in Michigan, Lillie and the team at Taste Michigan enlisted the help of the creative professionals at Factory Detroit, a full-service advertising agency based in Detroit.

“[Lillie] reached out and said, ‘Would you guys be interested in putting a proposal together for this?’ And we said we will. And we did. We had a number of meetings and calls, and they ended up selecting us from the finalists,” says Mark Lantz, founder and Executive Creative Director of Factory Detroit.

As the co-creator of the award-winning “Pure Michigan” campaign during his time as Chief Strategy O fficer at the global advertising firm McCann (formerly McCann Erickson), Lantz says the new brand and campaign were “up his alley” as a wine enthusiast.

Despite Lillie’s initial concerns about Taste Michigan’s limited initial budget – about a quarter of the block grant award was allocated to strategy with the remaining three-quarters going toward the advertising media buy – Lantz and the Factory Detroit team were able to provide a high-quality campaign by adhering to their core creative philosophies.

“Most of [the Factory Detroit team] are from very big agencies. We've had big, big clients in here. We’ve had clients with bigger budgets and clients with smaller budgets. And our philosophy is that if you want to look good, sound good and feel good to people – that really doesn't always take money. It takes caring,” Lantz says.

A technical process behind the creative process

To get started on the Taste Michigan project, Lantz and the team at Factory Detroit engaged in a three-part process that involved hosting three listening sessions with Michigan wine industry professionals including winery owners, winemakers, grape growers and others to hear their perspectives about the Michigan wine industry, business challenges, opportunities and more.

Next, Lantz’s team sent out an online survey to members and industry friends of the Michigan Wine Collaborative to “dig deeper into thoughts about opportunities and challenges.” Finally, Factory Detroit conducted an online survey sent to subscribers of a local wine-centric e-newsletter – a move that offered the agency a glimpse of consumer attitudes toward Michigan wines before coming up with concept ideas for the new brand’s advertising campaign.

“What [the preliminary process] showed us was that there are a lot of people, among wine drinkers in Michigan, who are perhaps positively disposed towards the idea of drinking Michigan wine but don't really know all that much about it. There’s a sense that the understanding of Michigan wine that people do have is kind of out of date,” Lantz says.

A focus on the industry’s evolution

After completing Taste Michigan’s brand platform, which included a logo and website alongside a social media presence last fall, the team at Factory Detroit was ready to get started on the brand’s advertising campaign –something they wanted to ensure was unique and fresh to attract a new group of wine lovers while disposing of older, outdated ideas associated with the state’s wines.

“We wanted to create a platform that was not just about, ‘Yay Michigan,’ or, ‘Yay Michigan wines,’ but, here's why Michigan wines. Here's how you should be thinking about Michigan wines, and here's what you should be looking for in Michigan wines, and here's where and when and how Michigan wines really shine,” Lantz says.

For Lantz and the team at Factory Detroit, the Taste Michigan campaign offered a unique opportunity to tell an updated story about the state’s wine industry while moving beyond the typical sweet wines it was known for in previous decades.

“The grapes that are being grown are much more diverse, and there's a great story there. There are good wines being made here, and I do see why [Taste Michigan] wanted to look for an opportunity to promote Michigan wines – because there's something worth promoting,” Lantz says.

What’s ‘cool is hot’ in Michigan

After considering about ten potential concepts for this spring’s campaign, the team at Taste Michigan settled on one they felt confident in – with a particular emphasis on Michigan’s cool climate and diverse grape selection.

“The theme of the campaign is ‘cool is hot,’ in that we are at a time when cool climate wines are among the hottest wines in the industry,” Lantz explains, noting that the campaign feels “revelatory” in its ability to offer consumers a fresh look at Michigan wines.

That fresh perspective is something Lillie plans to expand on as the Taste Michigan brand matures, placing a particular emphasis on the state’s unique merits.

“Our style and our climate define us – those are our strengths, and that's what we're going to start telling people about,” Lillie says.

As of press time, the “Cool is Hot” campaign is set to launch in mid-April to coincide with Michigan Wine Month, which traditionally takes place May each year under the declaration of the governor. Wine lovers in Metro Detroit, southwest Michigan and the Grand Rapids area – places where the ads will run in higher concentrations – should be on the lookout for billboards, digital and print ads, and more. For Lillie, the campaign is just another part of what Taste Michigan aims to do best – sharing the stories of Michigan’s wine industry and supporting the growers, producers, winemakers, and other professionals that have dedicated themselves to putting Michigan wines on the map.

“Michigan has been making quality, food-friendly wines for generations. And now it's time for the rest of the world to know,” Lillie says.

About The Author

Erin Marie Miller is a freelance journalist based in Metro Detroit. A lover of all things independent, she has written about small businesses, restaurants, nonprofits, the arts and more for publications in Michigan and California Since 2014.