barrel storage systems

. The standard 200-liter oak barrel might be remarkably easy to move, given its weight, but when it is not moving it has, to be kept somewhere, and once there are more than two or three lying around, that requires a storage system. See barrel.

The oldest and simplest system in use dates back to the origins of barrel aging, when the barrels used were primarily shipping containers. To maximize the amount of space in a ship’s hold, they would be laid on their sides in rows, bungs up, with more barrels placed on top of them, cradled in the hollows between each pair and locked in place with wooden wedges. (For storing spirits, wood is always preferable to metal due to the danger posed by sparks in an environment saturated with the alcohol vapor that transpires through the pores of the barrels.) This “pyramid stacking” is still used in France and several European countries, where warehouses are characterized by long rows of barrels stacked between two and five high (they are seldom stacked higher). With this system, individual barrels are difficult to move without dismantling the whole pyramid, but as the bungs of the barrels are all accessible, spirit can easily be pumped out of them for blending—it is the system used in Spain for solera aging—or to go into a different kind of barrel or cellar environment (e.g., from a “wet” cellar to a “dry” cellar). See brandy de Jerez, élevage.

In Scotland, the traditional “dunnage” system is a variation of the pyramid system, with the barrels stacked on top of each other three high. Each layer is separated by long wooden runners fitted out with wedges. Since the casks are stacked belly over bung, it is not a system for moving the spirit around often; it is one for sticking it in the warehouse and leaving it there until it is ready.

Because of the difficulty of moving the barrels, the pyramid and dunnage systems are best in low warehouses where barrel position is not much of a factor in aging. In Kentucky, a different system is used, the “rickhouse” system, where the barrels are held in multistory warehouses. There they rest in vertical wooden racks, which can be as much as seven stories high, with each story being three barrels high. The simplest rickhouses feature a unitary construction, where the racks are all connected so as to form the inner core of the building with the floors themselves attached to that framework and the whole thing covered with a skin of brick, wood, or corrugated tin.

Where in pyramid stacking the heads of the barrels are turned to the aisles between them, in rickhouses it is the bellies of the barrels. This allows them to easily be rolled out of the racks and moved to a different position in the warehouse—from the intensely hot top floor, for instance, to the relatively cool bottom. This allows for balanced aging, as does the great amount of air circulation that rickhouses allow. See whisky, bourbon.

There are other systems in use, but they are generally variations on these. One modern exception that is finding more and more use (e.g., by Irish distillers and several Canadian distillers) is palletized storage, where anywhere from four to nine barrels are placed upright on a wooden pallet, strapped down, and then stacked vertically on top of each other. These pallets can of course only be moved mechanically, but they can be packed very tightly, saving warehouse space, at the expense of air circulation.Sachs, Tony, “Whisky Barrel 101: All About Warehouses.” Whisky Magazine, June 11, 2020. https://www.whiskyadvocate.com/all-about-whisky-warehouses/ (accessed March 28, 2021).

Veach, Michael R. Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013.

By: David Wondrich