What happens to empty barriques?
Creative furniture, flooring with a winey aroma, and chips to give a special touch to your Sunday that’s where the barriques go
The swinging chair Miss-Dondola-Missoni
By Donatella Cinelli Colombini
A barrique’s life is quite short: when it is new it is used for great wines, when it has been used for the third time, so in its third year, it used for the less prestigious wines but when it begins to give the wine a bitter finish, the wine makers see it as a danger, to be removed from the cellar as soon as possible.
It is possible to regenerate it through a scratching and toasting, procedure which in Italy only a few companies know how to do (like our Facebook friend Romiti Pietro). In most cases the barriques end up at the carpenters.
The price is good, between 30 – 50€ for roughly 50 kg of wonderful oak wood but the curving makes the barrel staves not easy to use.
The best example comes from the furniture made with this wood in San Patrignano in 2012: the swinging chair called Miss Dondola by Angela Missoni, the Bottea seat by Mario Botta, the lamp by Pininfarina … high quality objects of originator design and all made by hand by
Idee-Parquet-Divinilegni
200 young people who work in the carpenter laboratories, who decorate and weld the objects in the San Patrignano branches of Rimini, Trento and Botticella.
Obviously this is not the only example of barrique wood carpentry even though the San Patrignano furniture has gone all over the world and won prizes as far away as Boston.
Di vini legni in Torrita di Siena proposes furniture but even floorings which are wonderful to see and to smell.
The chairs made by Torchio are also beautiful and with a wonderful aroma …
whiskey-Jack-Deniel’s-cips
Many examples to which a very amusing article in Intravino, which I suggest you read, has added the most curious solutions: drums, a pair of glasses, smoking chips, from
the wood from Jack Daniels whiskey barrels to be burnt in the barbeque to give the meat a refined peaty aroma.
I use barriques and tonneaux that we have finished with as tables by the pool and I the gardens at Fattoria del Colle and even though it seems incredible, these are among the most photographed objects by our guests.