Hello everyone, Matt Melendez, crew member for the David Grubnic-driven DHL Top Fuel dragster here. As we head to my home town race in Sonoma, Kalitta Motorsports publicist Todd Myers and I thought that it would be a good time for us to do a blog about my day job in the wine industry.
Yes, I am among the “F.I.G.S” out there in the nitro pits, those lucky enough to enjoy life at the drag strip as “Fly In Guys” while maintaining somewhat of a normal life back home in Northern California. About once every two weeks, I leave work on Thursday and hustle to the airport in Sacramento and jump on a late afternoon flight in order to make it to the crew van in time to ride to the track Friday morning. Typically, I will be back in Sonoma in time to head in to work Monday morning at Innerstave, which is located less than five miles from Infineon Raceway. At Innerstave I help with fabrication, some design work, process improvements, and equipment maintenance and repair.
Innerstave was founded nearly 30 years ago, first as a wine barrel repair business, and early on began producing the first “new oak barrel alternative.” As most of you probably know, many varietals of wine and numerous distilled spirits are aged in fire toasted barrels constructed of French, American or Hungarian oak hardwood, mainly because these species of trees produce a wood that is rich in tannic acid. Aging these beverages in toasted vessels constructed of such wood gives them a distinct flavor, a tradition that goes back 100 years. Barrels have been used as storage vessels for centuries.
Innerstave founders Bob Rodgers and Cole Cornelius realized that barrels, however intriguing or romantic, are cost prohibitive when it comes to producing fine wines. French oak wine barrels, with the U.S. dollar trading at near all time lows against the Euro, fetch as much as $1,000 a piece these days, and they’re typically only good for about three fillings before the wood goes “neutral.” This barrel expense can add around $7 to the price that the end consumer pays for a bottle of wine. Thus, the concept for new barrel alternatives was born.
Our core product is known as Barrel Innerstave. It is an insert that we install into neutral barrels consisting of 20 oak staves attached to polyethylene rods. The collective surface area of these staves provides the same barrel flavor profile as a new 225-liter wine barrel, and can be produced at any of four different toast levels, in either French or American oak wood, depending upon a Wine Maker’s preference. When a winery has neutral barrels, our Coopers (those individuals who build, repair and/or service barrels) will knock the heads off of the barrels, install the Innerstave assemblies so that they are tight against the inside, and reseal the barrels. The Cooper’s work truly is a specialty. No sort of sealers are used in closing up the barrels, so the barrel heads must be properly seated and tensioned, or you are guaranteed a leaking barrel, which makes the wine makers and their accountants very unhappy. As the wood becomes saturated with wine or other spirit, it seals itself up.
Barrels from Innerstave became such a popular product that other products were developed. Innerstave now produces numerous products that are for use in Stainless Steel tanks as large as 100,000 gallons. These include tank staves, wood chips, bag of block, fans and stub staves. You may be asking your self why would we produce so many products that basically accomplish the same thing. The reason being is that each winemaker has his or her own preferences of how quickly they need the product to achieve full extraction and/or integration of flavors with the wine. The smaller the surface area of the oak product (e.g., chips) the quicker the extraction of flavors. The larger surface area products (fans, bag of blocks and tank systems) offer the winemaker the opportunity for extraction similar to a barrel in a large format. All of our products provide the winemaker with premium barrel flavors allowing them to make high quality wines in tanks. Producing the wine in this high-volume fashion makes it possible to sell quality wines at an everyday drinking price point.
If you plan on traveling to Sonoma for the race, you really should try to set aside a little time to visit some of the local wineries that make Sonoma and Napa counties a travel destination for people from all over the world.