Wood, Whiskey and Wine: A History of Barrels by Henry H. Work

By Henry H. Work

Barrels—we infrequently recognize their value, yet with out them we'd be lacking out on the various world’s best beverages—most particularly whiskies and wines—and after all for over thousand years they’ve been used to shop, delivery, and age an extremely diversified array of provisions world wide. during this entire and wide-ranging publication, Henry paintings tells the interesting tale of the numerous and ever-evolving position wood barrels have performed over the past millennia, revealing how the historical past of the barrel parallels that of expertise at large.
           
Exploring how barrels tailored to the necessities of the world’s altering economic climate, business trips again to the barrel’s preliminary improvement, describing how the Celtic tribes of Northern Europe first crafted them within the first millennia BCE. He exhibits how barrels turned intrinsically associated with using wooden and ships and grew right into a very important and versatile section of the delivery undefined, used to move not just wine and beer, but in addition nails, explosives, or even Tabasco sauce. Going past the delivery of products, paintings discusses the various makes use of of this cylindrical box and its relations—including its smaller cousin, the keg—and examines the method of getting older forms of alcohol. He additionally appears to be like at how barrels have survived lower than danger from today’s plastics, cardboards, and metals.

providing a brand new frame of mind approximately probably the most enduring and winning items in historical past, Wood, Whiskey and Wine might be a must-read for everybody from expertise buffs to beverage aficionados who desire to higher take into account that evasive intensity of flavor.

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It is worthwhile here to examine the origin and use of the amphora as a comparison to the barrel. This overview can provide insight into the issues of how an entirely new container and packaging concept – the barrel – could enter into the mainstream trade and transportation systems of the first millennium bc. Evidence of the first simple pottery – from shards and broken pots – has been dated to c. 14,000 bc, possibly as early as 18,000 bc. Advance a couple of thousand years, and the amphora, Ian Morris suggests, was developed by the Chinese in around 4800 bc, with containers of a similar shape being found later in the West, starting c.

However, the nature of a barrel’s contents would be known to the tradesmen and shippers by its size and style, which was often standardized within a particular trading system for a specific commodity. Individual shipments or stores of barrels were numbered. However, no attempt was made to number or barcode every barrel in the world, as with today’s metal shipping containers. Throughout history, Morris notes: ‘Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for an easier, more profitable and safer way to do things.

As a recent visitor to this site, when standing atop a recently reconstructed wall, I had a clear view of the Danube and its surrounding floodplains – no doubt a similar view to that seen by Celtic sentries over 2,000 years ago. Then, with some of the forests cleared of timber for construction of dwellings, cooperage, furniture and firewood, the plains would have been a patchwork of cow pastures and cultivated land. Travellers using the river for transport, or passing overland 36 celts: a nexus of skills and technology on foot, horseback or with a cart through the Danube valley, would have been observed.

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