Students at EIT Hawke’s Bay are finding winemaking even more absorbing using new oak barrels to mature their wines.

Visiting Hawke’s Bay last year, TB Tonnellerie principal Jean Charles Hubert noticed the school’s winery did not have any of the French company’s barrels. In fact, there were no new barrels at all.
Wine producers regard new wood, and in particular French oak, as the optimum for maturing premium wine.

Mr Hubert arranged with the company’s New Zealand representative, Alastair Picton-Warlow, to donate two new oak barrels to EIT for the students’ use.

School of Viticulture research leader Malcolm Reeves says the extremely generous gift was most welcome at a time when tertiary funding was tight.

“It has given the students and staff the opportunity to work with new oak, which previously has been difficult. It was particularly fitting given the quality of Hawke’s Bay’s 2009 vintage.”

A major supplier of premium quality staves to other French barrel making companies,TB Tonnellerie began 11 years ago to make a small number of top quality barrels marketed under its own brand.

“The tight grain and the toast character produced by a slow toasting procedure give the barrels their recognised quality,” said an appreciative Mr Reeves.