BARREL-PROTECT®: protecting an empty barrel without sulfur
A product that works on the wood of an empty barrel, not in the wine. Here is how we use it and what we still cannot measure well.
An empty barrel is the fragile moment in a barrel's life. The wood stays damp, there is air, and spoilage flora asks for nothing more. The traditional answer is the sulfur wick, renewed on a regular basis. BARREL-PROTECT® was developed to fill that role a different way, with oak tannins applied to the inner surface of the barrel.
What the product does, and where it works
BARREL-PROTECT® is neither a disinfectant nor a preservative. On the inner surface of the barrel it creates an environment that is not favorable to spoilage bacteria and yeasts taking hold. It works on the wood, during empty storage, and it is drained out before the barrel is filled. It does not go into the wine.
That is also why it replaces sulfur in this specific use: no wick to burn, no sulfite added at this stage.
BARREL-PROTECT® or EBX PROTECT, the most common mix-up
People regularly call us to order one while describing the other, so we may as well say it plainly. The two products do not work in the same place.
| BARREL-PROTECT® | EBX PROTECT | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it works | on the wood of an empty barrel | in the wine |
| What it targets | spoilage flora during empty storage | antioxidant protection of the wine |
| When | between two fillings, about 4 months of protection | during fermentation or maturation |
| Contact with the wine | none, the barrel is drained | yes, it is an addition to the wine |
If your problem is a wine that is oxidizing, BARREL-PROTECT® is not the product. If your problem is a barrel stock that will sit empty for several months, EBX PROTECT is not the product either.
The protocol, in order
It fits into your usual barrel care routine and calls for no special equipment. The sequence we recommend is the following.
- Hot water rinse of the barrel, then drain.
- Spray 35 mL (about 1.2 oz) of BARREL-PROTECT® onto the inner surface, while the barrel is still warm.
- Let it rest 15 minutes.
- Drain, bung in place, storage.
The quality of the hot water rinse matters as much as the product itself. On a poorly rinsed barrel, we do not know what the treatment gives, and our trials in that case are too scattered for us to draw a rule from them. A product does not make up for cellar practice.
Four months, and what that number means
One application covers about 4 months of empty storage. That is the order of magnitude we take from our own follow-ups, not a contractual guarantee. It assumes a properly rinsed barrel, a bung in place, and a cellar that stays within reasonable temperatures. A storage room at 25 °C (77 °F) in August does not behave like an underground cellar, and we do not have enough series in warm conditions to give a separate number.
On sensory impact, our position is the same: in our tastings, we have not found any mark of the treatment on wines later housed in those barrels. That is what we observe, in our trials, with the limits of a tasting. If you see something different at your place, we want to know.
What we do not promise
We do not say that the product extends a barrel's life by a given number of years, or that it raises its resale value. Those are effects that people sometimes report to us, that we find plausible, and that we do not know how to measure properly. As long as that is the case, they will stay out of our technical pages.
What we stand behind is more modest: caring for an empty barrel without sulfuring it over and over, with a short, repeatable step. The questions that come up most often about this product are gathered in our questions and answers, and it sits with the rest of the oak range in the shop.
Read next : Brettanomyces in Barrels: How to Protect Your Wine Naturally · EBX PROTECT: what an oak tannin does against oxygen