Summer is in full swing, which for us and the winegrowers means that preparations for autumn must be too.

The first grapes are already ripe in the vineyards and in the surrounding villages there are even some notices publicising the new wine.

Every year, when the work for the current autumn is done and dusted, it’s straight onto organising for the following autumn. Here at Eder, we prepare all year round for this very demanding time of year. We check the weather and prevailing climate, provide our customers with pesticides and fertilisers, estimate whether it will be a good or poor vintage year and plan the orders with our partner cooperages in France and the USA – we have to plan a good two months ahead for shipments from the USA. Anyone who ships goods worldwide knows only too well that only one thing is certain – that nothing is certain. Believe you me, we could write a book about the challenges we face organising freight.

We have also been preparing for autumn in our own cooperage. This requires well-thought-out planning, as the oak we use for the barrels has to air-dry over several months or years. Our high-tech kiln can offer us a degree of consistency and durability during this process, but we cannot and do not want to mechanise the natural influences that the weather has on the wood.

In addition to cutting the wood, the workforce required must also be carefully planned so that our cooperage is busy but not overloaded.

It is therefore not surprising that the lead time for a large barrel or a fermentation vat is currently several months. So, it makes sense that the purchase of such a barrel is well thought out, planned and the order placed in good time, ideally as early as spring. We would also be happy to measure your cellar to best utilise the space available for your wine.

If you do not want to mature your wine in a large barrel, but in a classic barrique or tonneau instead, we can respond much more quickly. Nevertheless, experience has shown that production and supply chains flow much better when orders are placed early. In this way, we can organise our warehouse to suit the needs of our customers and meet demand at short notice.

The most popular barrels are made of French, American, German or European oak, depending on which grape variety is to be matured in them. The most common barrel sizes are 225/228 l, 300 l and 500 l.

Used barrels are also very popular in the autumn as they are imbued with more flavour. In the wine cellar, the barrels are emptied and the wine is bottled. We at Eder buy these freshly- emptied barrels to sell them on as storage barrels. There are several advantages to buying these used barrels. On the one hand, used barrels are considerably cheaper than new ones and on the other hand, the strong tannins and wood notes have already been washed out of the barrels during the previous filling, which ensures a gentler wood influence on the next product. This is complemented by the flavour of the previous filling, which is now imparted to a completely different wine (or beer or distillate).

But cellar management involves other factors than just sorting out the barrels. If you need barrels, you haven’t got the time to visit our barrel storage facilities and check out the wide range of accessories. So here, too, we replenish our stocks in the summer so that we are ready to deliver in the autumn.

When the wine festival season is over and the bottled wine has been sold, it’s harvest time.

Before the new grapes can be harvested and processed, everything in the cellar and the winery has to be brought up to standard, cleaned, repaired if necessary and individual components and machines replaced.

The grape harvest usually begins with the “early variety” Rivaner (also called Müller-Thurgau). In the sequence of grape varieties, Dornfelder ripens, followed by Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, similarly Kerner, followed by Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. With the ripening of the Riesling grapes, the harvest finally comes to its majestic conclusion.

The harvest of the varieties does not follow a strict sequence, but rather time windows within which the grape varieties can be harvested. During the harvest, winegrowers need a lot of intuition to find the optimal time to harvest the grapes for the desired wine. “Will the weather hold? Can we get a few more degrees on the Oechsle scale (the unit in which the sweetness of a wine is measured)? Is there a threat of frost?” These are just some of the questions that arise in autumn during the harvest.

For an elegant round wine, the interplay between the Oechsle degrees and pleasant acidity values is very important. This depends to a large extent on getting the timing of the harvest right.

Once it is possible to gauge the end flavours of the individual grape varieties, the winemaker will decide which wines he will want to mature in stainless steel tanks and which in wooden barrels. We provide active advice and support in this process.

Our delivery teams and reliable forwarding agents arrange delivery of the ordered barrels. After being soaked with water, the barrels are then filled with high-quality wine. Thus wine and barrel spend their storage time together in the cellar and then the resulting vintage is bottled and enjoyed in glasses in the years ahead.

But we aren’t just able to help you with barrels and barrel racks. Wood alternatives – often called chips, cubes or shavings – are also part of our product range. Using these products, you can still impart the aromas of wood to wine that is matured in a tank instead of in a wooden barrel.

Please get in touch. We will be happy to advise you!