Why a 350-year-old oak makes the world’s most expensive wine barrels
Something new to share: an exclusive interview with Jean-Luc Sylvain, owner of Sylvain Tonnellerie.
In 1669, Colbert designed a French silviculture system to reorganise and improve French forestry, especially oak for the navy: a programme so patient it is still shaping forests today. The Chêne de Morat, one of France’s protected “Arbres Remarquables”, was one of those trees, left standing for over three centuries so the French National Forestry Office could study how oaks behave over time.
When it was reaching the end of its life, Jean-Luc bought it, and did something that had never been done before: he made wine barrels from a single, almost four-centuries-old tree.
“A 350-year-old oak doesn’t just look different. It ages wine differently.”
Softer tannins, a silkier texture, and aromas no younger tree can produce.
Where our own project begins
OCTARR’s DARA project takes the roughly 80% of a felled Arbre Remarquable that the cooperage industry can’t use, and turns it into handmade paper and artworks, starting with a tree named Dara.
The goal: give these ancient oaks another 300 years of life. It’s this paper that DARArtNouveau in Brussels is built around.
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