Tonnellerie Plantagenet focuses on French oak barrels chosen from four forests, remaining consistent each year and playing equal roles in each barrel, with twenty-five percent from each forest in the final blend.
The four forests come from the four regions in France known for producing oak for wine barrels—NE France, the Loire Valley, and neighborhoods of Paris and Western France.
The wood undergoes grain assortment prior to hand-selection by Marc and then coopering, with two designations: Originale Selection (a semi-fine grain) and Rare Selection (a tight grain). Rare works well with wines aging more than 16 to 18 months in barrel, while Originale provides more expressive oak impact for shorter aging times.
For the wood selection and toasting, Marc draws upon his life experience and years working with the wineries of Bourgogne. He likes to say the Burgundian toast levels were designed based on his intuitions and the styles he thinks could work best with the philosophy of the barrels.
Nuance is a light long toasting, designed to maintain freshness of fruit and linearity on the palate. Special toast emulates the style of 19th century coopering, when coopers did not flip the barrel during toasting but rather left it on the fire until it developed distinct aromas of fresh bread, as if cooked in a brick oven.
Double is a toast just as the name implies, toasted twice—to Nuance levels in the morning, and after cooling are warmed and then toasted to Medium in the afternoon. This gives volume and brings in some sweet oak notes, without dominating the wine.
