The Incredible Concrete Wine Egg
There's something about the concrete egg that is speaking to wine people right now.
Whether it's the actual physical properties imparted to the wine by the strange ovoid, the optics of its otherworldly appearance, pay-it-forward economics, or some combination, chances are, this Seussical creation has landed – or is about to – at the hippest winery near you.
"Some of the most influential names in winemaking – Saxum, Quintessa, Sterling – are using our concrete eggs," says Steve Rosenblatt founder of Petaluma-based Sonoma Cast Stone, which began manufacturing custom concrete eggs 13 years ago at the request his neighbor Don Van Staaveren, the Three Sticks winemaker. At first, he admits, he thought the idea of creating concrete egg to age wine in sounded crazy. Sonoma Cast Stone made countertops, sinks and walls, but he had a small vineyard of his own (that Van Staaveren helped him with), and as he consulted with a handful of local winemakers, he realized Van Staaveren may have landed on a new market he never would have recognized on his own.
In all, Sonoma has now hatched about 1000 concrete eggs, and the eggs currently comprise about 35-40 percent of their business annually. He says he sees no sign of a slowdown, and notes that breweries are not knocking on his door for eggs.
But from whence did the egg come, what does it do and why are the cool kids so excited about it?
Greco-Roman Roots
Concrete has been used to ferment, store and transport wine since Greco-Roman times. But then French winemakers popularized oak barrels and, for centuries, oak was the vessel of choice deployed by mainstream premium winemakers for fermenting and aging wine.
In the 20th Century of course, California winemakers were the first to adopt stainless steel tanks for fermentation. The steel tank was all about control. The tanks are easy to clean, which prevents bacteria baddies from funking up wine; the tank temperature can be monitored, which also allows for maximum micro-management of the fermentation process. They were also shiny and cool-looking.
Still, in the 1980s and '90s, reds that had spent time on oak snagged top scores from critics, as did creamy, oak-aged Chardonnays. But around the turn of the millennium, tastes changed. Buttery Chardonnays became passé, and cool climate, restrained reds became the hotness.
Modern times
Around 2001, Michel Chapoutier, a trailblazing biodynamic producer in the Northern Rhône, and the first winemaker to print his wine labels in braille, commissioned an egg-shaped concrete fermentation vat from Marc Nomblot, a French concrete vat manufacturer. While he didn't respond to a requests for an interview, as legend has it, his custom 2.1-meter-high egg was designed to hold 600 liters of wine. Chapoutier, who appears to embrace the more esoteric spiritual-esque aspects of biodynamic winemakers, reportedly believed the egg's spheric shape would imbue it with "celestial energy".
Nomblot must have seen the sky-high commercial potential in the design after completing Chapoutier's initial egg, because the company soon scaled up manufacturing for others; Chapoutier threatened a lawsuit several years later after Nomblot sold the company to the Bonna Sabla Group, claiming he never received proper credit – or cash-money – for the design he claims intellectual responsibility for.
Nothing ever seemed to come of the lawsuit, but Chapoutier appears to still be steaming, as he has links to articles on the contretemps still up on his website.
Trademarking something as ephemeral as a shape, Rosenblatt explains, is next to impossible.
"Concrete and wine have been used together by Etruscans and Romans," he says. "When we first got started, we received a letter from the company that owns Nomblot threatening legal action, but after a few letters back and forth, nothing ever came of it. And five years after Nomblot himself sold his company and his own non-compete expired, he himself came out with a concrete egg of his very own."
Concrete vs. steel and oak
"When compared with oak and steel, concrete allows for more consistent aging, stable temperature, some micro-oxidation," says Esporoa's chief winemaker David Baverstock, who adds that the Alentejo, Portugal-based winery currently use concrete tanks, not eggs. "Stainless steel is quite inert and doesn't really encourage aging, so the wines don't improve. New barrels of course add some oak complexity along with tannin and aging through micro-oxidation, but older barrels produce fairly similar results as concrete."
At Esparoa, they use stainless steel for fermentation only, concrete and barrels for both fermentation and aging. For premium whites, Esparoa ferments in steel, then transfers to new oak for time on the lees; for premium reds, they ferment and age in oak and concrete, and for reds that are more fruit and terroir-driven, he sees a combination of fermentation in cement and aging in old barrels as showing promise.
Does the egg specifically add anything to the mix?
Yes, says Gianna Kelly, winemaker at Napa Valley's Galerie, who says she uses concrete eggs to ferment and age Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling, for their superior influence on texture, complexity and flavor.
"The big advantage of the egg is of course, that oval shape," Kelly says. "The shape allows for a natural convection of the lees all throughout fermentation, and this constant contact adds weight and complexity to the texture of our wines."
Matias Cruzat, a winemaker for Vina San Pedro's 1865 Wines in Chile, uses tanks and eggs to ferment Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, and then ferments and ages Pinot Noir in concrete to "preserve the fruit and character of the place". He saw his first egg in Santa Barbara County in 2010, and says he was immediately fascinated because he'd studied the ancient process of concrete egg-aging as a student, but had never seen them in action. He began using them himself in 2014. Now, instead of fermenting Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in new and old French Oak barrels, 1865 uses concrete, and Cruzat is thrilled with the results.
Some winemakers, who approach winemaking with almost pharmaceutical rigor, have teased out how concrete affects every minute aspect of a wine during its fermentation and aging processes.
"Concrete changes the perception of flavor," says Laura Diaz Munoz, winemaker and GM for St Helena's Ehlers Estate. "The texture and mouthfeel are affected due to the longer natural suspension of the lees in the juice. This affects the perception of acidity, which is crucial for flavor and aroma perception."
Munoz uses a combination of steel, oak and concrete, and uses concrete, as others do, for its stabilizing factor.
"It's the best material to keep temperature homogenous in all levels of the winemaking process," she says. Plus, it just does a some of the work of winemaking for her. "I perform battonage once a week in barrels, twice a week in stainless steel and just once a month in concrete to get the same result in wine."
Bare cost and unquantifiable cool
What's the damage? Ehlers, which uses Sonoma Cast Stone, shells out around $14,000 for a concrete egg with a 470-gallon capacity. A 60-gallon French puncheon, meanwhile costs $1000, and a stainless steel tank (3 tons) costs about $13,000. She has also experimented with concrete eggs from Nomblot, but finds Sonoma's eggs, unlike Nomblot's, don't need to be broken in before they provide a neutral, steady fermenting and aging influence on her wines.
While the upfront cost of a concrete egg per gallon of wine fermented and aged is higher, they can last for decades, similar to stainless steel, and far longer than oak, which typically lasts 4-7 years.
And while no one we spoke to shared Chapoutier's convictions about the egg's celestial powers, Galerie's Kelly did cautiously admit that she could "certainly see the parallels as eggs often represent new life and birth".
Kelly is also touching on the difficult to define, impossible to quantify but equally difficult to deny zeitgeisty power of the incredible appearance of eggs.
Like visitors from Mars, they add a sheen of Instagram-friendly, Millennial-courting mysterious cool that is either missing – or perhaps even more importantly, perceived to be missing – from a fuddy-duddy wine industry.
Egg-makers like Sonoma also customize their designs in a way that stainless and oak producers can't really compete with, and appeal to the winemaking industry's eternal quest for a competitive edge.
"Saxum wanted every step of their wine production to add additional layers of terroir," Rosenblatt explains. "So they sent us some of their calcium carbonate-rich rocks, sourced from vineyards in Paso Robles that were once the floor of the ocean. The soil there has limestone and traces of ancient fossils, which add to the overall flavor profile of the grapes. We crushed them into a powder and figured out how to mix some of it with concrete without compromising the structural integrity of the tank."
Terroir, aged in terroir, comes at a cost, but now they have bragging rights for eternity.
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