North Carolina Wine Barrels and Vino Con Brio Pinotage
I had previously mentioned that I had bought a French Oak Barrel from worldcooperage.com. They emailed me that it would take 8 weeks to produce and cost $200 to ship. I told them no thanks. Guess I am a little behind the 8 ball on that one. I spoke with Frank Hobson and a few others locally, they all buy used barrels from CA wineries. I am just not down with that. Seems like there is a lot of possibility of Brett and other bacteria in those barrels unless they are properly treated. Plus, I couldn’t find anybody willing to sell me just one 59 gall (225L) barrel. I even checked ebay, they had a few but they were 4-6 years old. Frank says they pay $50-$75 per barrel. Guess a bunch of wineries go in together.
I started calling and calling and calling, but nothing! Finally I called a home winemaking operation at beer-wine.com. They had a 60 gallon recooped barrel for $250 and $125 shipping. Ships from Massachusets. Recooped seems ok if you do your research. I was going to order from them, but then I got a call back from the east coast distributor of Kelvin Cooperage in Kentucky. They are in New Jesery. They sold me a brand new American Oak Barrel for $375.00 with a medium toast, and they have it in stock and will ship it for a 9/16 delivery. They also think they can ship it via UPS, but I am not sure how that would work.
Here is there contact info:
Gino Pinto, Inc.
373 S. White Horse Pike
Hammonton, NJ 08037
Tel: (609) 561-8199
Fax: (609) 561-3429
e-mail: makewine@comcast.net
www.ginopinto.com
One thing I learned from them is that they also ship clusters and fruit from Cali. They ship in 36lb refrigerated containers or 900lb bins. more importantly they said they can ship me Pinotage from Vino Con Brio. That’s pretty neat. I might buy 75lbs when I get back and try to make some Pinotage wine in my basement. My pinotage won’t be ready till next year.