Personally I think that barrel is the most important thing in whisky making. The way whisky tastes and its flavor are deeply related to the aging process inside the barrels. Also, characteristics and fermentation states can only be adjusted with barrel fermentation. Consequently, I really believe that barrel is the main base of whisky. I'm Kenta Nagae from Venture Whiskey Co., Ltd. I am a cooper at the company As a cooper, our job consists in doing the maintenance of barrels as well as making new barrels. In Japan, barrels are not so well known and, it’s not that much developed. The demand is relatively low, as a result, there’re only five cooperages in Japan including our factory. As a consequence the only way to become a cooper is to learn by doing. When this cooperage was made, our wish was to make everything ourselves while enjoying the process, and of course we wanted to make good whisky. We definitely didn’t want to cut corners. From when the tree is cut,
it takes 6 years before turning into whisky. Logs are dried for three years after they’ve been cut
and an additional three years of aging inside the barrels are needed prior to becoming whisky. Barrels coming out from our cooperage are made of mizunara oak (quercus crispula) It’s a type of oak tree. It grows in cold areas, above Tohoku region
and also in Hokkaido. There are also some mizunara oaks coming from Chichibu, growing up in 800 to 1000 meters high mountains. To begin with, we start by buying raw wood of mizunara oak. We are getting the wood from the bidding base called “Mei Boku Ichi” located in Hokkaido. We purchase it from the logs and we have them sawn. Then from square timber it goes through a machine to be cut to match the length of a barrel. Barrels' plank has the particularity of being thicker in the center and thinner on the side. Sides are thinned out while getting through a machine. By assembling it it will become a barrel. There are other types of oak such as white oak, spanish oak, French oak or European oak. But mizunara oak can only be found in Japan. The type of oak that is used for aging is strongly correlated to the taste of the whisky. Among them mizunara oak is known as a Japanese tree and has a unique fermentation. It is said it creates a nuance similar to a sandal tree. It tastes like heavy honey, like charred honey. It also has some nuances similar to incense sticks. The greatest asset is definitely the particular tastes coming from mizunara oaks. In order to differentiate our products,
we need to keep challenging ourselves. In that context, having a fermentation with mizunara oak is an option we have considered. If people acknowledge that mizunara oak fermentation could only be made in Japan or associate mizunara oak to Japanese whisky, I’ll be grateful. The most important work process is the charring process. By adding flame inside the barrel,
the inner part gets carbonized. It turns into charcoal and adsorbs unpleasant components
while the charcoal is aging. By charring the barrel, it also causes cracks in the wood, that helps the liquid to soak in better. By soaking in, the liquid can extract more ingredients from the material,
that results in a better fermentation. That’s why this is the most important process. The wood is bend while steaming by sprinkling water As charring doesn’t go evenly on the whole barrel, we pour water to harmonize the process and to suppress the variations. My feeling toward coopering may seem selfish but I feel like I’m competing internally with the master blenders and the customers. As I said earlier, aging is really important for whisky. Among the various processes of whisky making, coppering is the work we are involved in. Therefore we feel proud when people say good whisky came out from our barrel. When customers and master blenders tell us the whisky from that specific barrel was incredible it makes us truly happy. That is why I believe our job is to exceed the expectations. “Wow, that barrel was amazing really good whisky came out from this” That’s the kind of words that give us meaning to our work, we keep that in mind while making barrels. There’s obviously a lot of things the young coopers don’t understand, we need to train them from scratch. That is the reason why, I teach them everything I know. I want them to always keep in mind, to not be satisfied with their work. As it is an technical skill set, if you stop your growth somewhere, it will inevitably end there. I want them to feel they can always keep on growing. That’s when you place the lid inside the barrel. After that, the entire barrel is assembled. We can build a barrel in a day, However the material we use, the mizunara oak, is a very leaky material. The process to stop the leaking,
is adding more time on the making. It depends on the barrel, but it takes around one more day to stop the leaking. To do so, we need to assemble a barrel first then we fill it with water to check if there’s no leaking. When it does leak, liquid comes out from the wood, and the only solution we have is to replace the leaking material. We repeat the process until there’s no more leaking. Mizunara oak has the characteristic of twisting while growing, therefore, we sometimes have some material that is twisted. Inside the wood there’s a conduit that connects
the inner to the outer part of the wood. Those conduits are like straws, so when the material is twisted leaks are coming from those conduits. Among all the barrels we cooper, with an 80% rate, we can know in advance what material may leak. But we can’t know for sure, and as mizunara oaks are only produced in Japan,
the quantity is limited. Under those conditions, we can't allow ourselves to be too picky before starting assembling, otherwise only a small amount of usable material will be left. That’s the reason why we decide to assemble the barrels first
and then check if there’s any leak. Here, we don’t only use mizunara oak barrels, we also purchase barrels which contained liquors like bourbon, wine or sherry. We then use them to age our whisky. Therefore, as a company we are contents if we can produce a good amount of mizunara oak barrels annually, we are aiming to produce more than 100 barrels. A single barrel could be used for 50 to 60 years continuously, however the longer you use the less it will age well. All the ingredients will be taken off the material, and will eventually become a barrel that won’t ferment. For that reason I think barrels’ life expectancy is around 50-60 years. Personally, I consider myself as still inexperienced, in terms of skill, experience, and knowledge.
I want to keep on learning, around the world, there are different cooperages
withholding various skillsets if I could learn a least one thing, it will mean a lot to me. Of course learning all the skills around the globe may be something impossible, however, I would like to learn as much as I can. And if that happens I wish to pass those skillsets to the young coopers. My biggest goal, personally is to manage a mizunara oak tree reserve. What we are currently doing here is purchasing mizunara oak. But growing mizunara oak from scratch before it turns into barrels is a long story. Nevertheless, if I could do that as a company, it would be great. The material we currently use has been growing from 80 to 150 years before being cut. Growing a large amount of trees and purchasing a large amount of woods will certainly get harder in the near future. As a consequence it can be something we can start doing now.
