Climate Change and Oak Forests
We now buy our wood roughly 250 km further north than the previous generation did. That is the fact this piece starts from, and it is about the resource rather than about our products.
What the figures say
We are neither foresters nor climate scientists. So we quote the people who measure. The French National Forest Inventory, run by IGN, records an average mortality of 16.7 million cubic metres a year for 2015 to 2023, against 7.4 million for 2005 to 2013. Dead trees now represent 5 % of the standing wood volume.
Over the same period, biological production, meaning what the forest produces each year, falls by 4 %, to 87.8 million cubic metres a year against 91.5 before. Between 2021 and 2024, 8 % of the 2.3 billion trees assessed showed symptoms of damage, and pedunculate oak stands at 10 %. The forest carbon sink is estimated at 39 million tonnes of CO₂ a year, against 63 in the previous period.
These figures are not ours, but they have to be taken on board. We report them because they match what we observe when we buy.
What we observe
Three factors come up regularly in our exchanges with the foresters we work with. Water stress, when the tree goes short of water one season and then another, without making up the shortfall. Heat stress, with hotter summers and winters whose cold is no longer always enough for the dormancy cycle. And progressive fatigue, that of a tree which takes several difficult years in a row and eventually fails to come back. An oak rarely dies of an accident: it wears out, and a worn out tree resists attack less well, disease and pests alike.
What we cannot tell you is what this will give in the glass. A tree growing under stress does not form its rings the same way, and many people jump straight from there to denser wood, different tannins, therefore a different taste. That chain is shakier than it looks: in oak, ring width alone does not predict what the wood will release once toasted. For a single one of our profiles, it takes us several years of tastings before we can write what it brings. If the raw material shifts, we will see it first at the toasting stage, and we would rather measure it before we talk about it.
Moving north has a limit
Going north works today because there are mature oaks up there, planted by others before us. But the favourable zone keeps moving, and it moves toward places where cooperage oak has not grown yet. Stave wood cannot be improvised: the ONF asks foresters to manage these stands so that ring width stays under 2.5 millimetres, which means slow, tended growth over a very long time. At Tronçais, 40 hectares are renewed each year out of 10,500, a cycle of more than two centuries. We can move our purchasing in one generation. The forest cannot follow at that pace, and that is why we talk about saving the material rather than simply going to find it somewhere else.
What we do have a hold on
We will not make forests grow back. We do decide what becomes of every log that enters our workshop, and that is the only lever that genuinely belongs to us.
On a quality oak, only 20 to 25 % of the wood goes to stave making. For 2018 the Syndicat des Mérandiers de France gave these orders of magnitude: 500,000 cubic metres of oak bought, 341,636 processed, 62,244 cubic metres of stave wood produced, roughly one fifth. The rest is classified as industrial wood or fuel wood.
Then comes the barrel. It remains a remarkable object, it made our family history, and this is not about replacing it. The question is rather whether every wine needs one. A barrel releases about 60 % of its oenological capital in the first year. Do the maths: what is its potential after three years? Go and look at our tool, you will be surprised: barrel diagnostic. Technique has also come far enough that, in some cases, exceptional things are achieved with staves or with tannins. For the same quantity of oak, the material works more completely there, and part of the wood that would not have had the size for a barrel stave finds an oenological use.
We will not write that alternative oak preserves the forest: that would go beyond what we can establish. We will only say that, on a resource which is becoming scarcer, saving what has already been cut strikes us as a reasonable requirement, and one that is within our reach.
What it changes for you
| What is changing in the forest | What it implies in your cellar |
|---|---|
| The resource is becoming scarcer and the harvesting area is moving north | The pressure on stave wood is not a passing phase, it comes from the forest itself. We do not expect a return to the abundance of twenty years ago, and we will tell you if we turn out to be wrong. |
| Only a fifth of the oak bought becomes stave wood | What you put in the tank is taken from that share. A trial on a few litres still costs less than a tank you have to correct. |
| A barrel releases about 60 % of its oenological capital in the first year | On a second or third wine barrel, an insert brings oak back without having to buy a new barrel. |
Our commitment
Of all the formats we make, tannins are the ones that get the most out of the material: for a given quantity of oak, extraction is the most complete. That is why we favour them. This advantage only holds, however, if their own production is low in carbon. An energy hungry extraction would cancel out what it saves on the resource, and that is a point on which we judge ourselves first.
The second commitment is about dose. Over-oaking is oak spent without benefit and a wine out of balance: the two usually go together. Our decision support tools, starting with the AMEDEE Lab simulator, exist to look for the right quality rather than the maximum quantity. They suggest, they do not decide. If one of our benchmarks does not hold at your place, write to us: we would rather correct a number than defend it.
Sources: National Forest Inventory, IGN, 2025 results; Office national des forêts, regular oak high forest and the Tronçais forest; Syndicat des Mérandiers de France, 2018 figures quoted by the Revue forestière française.
Read next : The Merrain Forest: Where Every Oak Journey Begins · Where AMÉDÉE Comes From: A Family, A Workshop, A Choice