It has to be one of the most serendipitous accidents of history.
France's towering oak forests, first cultivated generations ago
for Louis XIV's warships, today provide the raw material for the
barrels that help produce the best wines of Bordeaux, perhaps
the finest expression of the heady alchemy between oak and wine.
"We are lucky in our business, because these trees were
initially meant for naval construction, not barrels," admits
Jean-Luc Sylvain, a third-generation barrel-maker, or cooper,
and CEO of Tonnellerie Sylvain in the southwest of France. "But
the fact that we selected and cultivated a variety of oak and
forced it to grow in height not girth, has a chemical effect,
which has a consequence for wine. "There is something that
happens between the oak tannins and the wine tannins, you have a
marriage, an alchemy that takes place in the barrel." With an
annual production of 500,000 barrels, France's coopers dominate
the global trade, relying on the forests first cultivated on the
orders of Jean-Baptis