The french oak casks.

Posted by C.daSILVA / at Saturday, June 18, 2011 / /

The emblematic coopers room at C. da Silva´s cellar.
Nowadays a slice of C. da Silva´s history...where we keep the old staves, the cooper´s tools, the fire place used to smoke and reduce the thickness of the french oak casks...

C. da Silva´s coopers room

From the thickness of the wood to the braces that mould the staves, one of the secrets of our wines lays in the barrels that store the Port wine, handcrafted by wise cooper masters.

Toasting the french oak casks

The quality of the oak it´s also very important – french oak is considered the best one, but the majority of the barrels are made with portuguese oak or chestnut, but for our Port maturation we only use seasoned french oak.

To make  a first quality barrel you need to wait one century for the tree to grow and 3 years more to smoke and dried it, it´s the reason that normally the flavor of caramel is easy to pick in a tawny ( small amounts of sugar in the oaks cells ), normally when we are thinking about buying a 30y old tawny, a Over 40y old tawny or even a old Colheita ( single year tawny ) and we consider the price expensive, it´s always very important, to keep in mind some of the highest quality factors...