The cooperage at Yalumba sits a little apart from the rest of the winery. No high-vis covering the walls. No warning signs everywhere. Shaun Gibson likes it that way.
Fire and water still do most of the work. The oldest surviving trade in the world has not needed much improvement. Pictographs from Egypt show casks thousands of years ago. The shape was already right. The method was already right. Apart from a little hydraulic and electrical help for the heavy lifting, the idea has stayed the same. What is humbling, Shaun says, is that a civilisation always trying to reinvent the wheel has, in this case, nothing left to invent.
He did not grow up in the trade. Born in Adelaide, first years in Leigh Creek, a coal-mining town north of the Valley. The family moved to the Barossa when he was about five and has stayed. Proud Barossans ever since. No long line of winemakers behind him. His mother did a season of grape-picking the first year, just to find their feet. That was the extent of the family connection.
The path was the wood. He liked the technical side of it. In the place they lived, that pointed to one thing. After Year 12 he applied around and landed the apprenticeship at Yalumba. He did not expect to still be here a quarter of a century later. The place is hard to walk away from. When he started there was his teacher and three other full-time qualified coopers. They were traditionally oriented people. Hand tools. The proper ways of doing things. Not a factory.
When the teacher left, a decade or so on, he passed the baton. Head Cooper. Flattering and a little scary. Managing some of the people he had learned from.
Knowing the old tools and the repair work still gives him an edge on coopers who work mostly with machines. Most days he is comfortable that an understanding of the wood will get a good result.
Only a handful of Australian wineries keep their own cooperage. Everyone else is looking at a website or listening to a salesperson. The barrels might have sat in a warehouse for two years before they crossed the equator. At Yalumba the difference is the walk down the hill. The winemaking team works hand-in-hand with the cooperage. Specific barrels for specific wines, mostly the premium reds. If something is wrong, the distance is short.
What goes into a barrel reflects the wine it will hold. More fire and more smoke pull darker notes - coffee, deep spice - by changing the tannins and lignans in the oak. Bigger, bolder wines take a traditional fire-bend and a heavier toast. For elegance and balance the staves are water-bent or steamed, then given a medium toast. The oak itself comes from different forests and climates: French, Hungarian, American. Different grain. Nothing predictable every time.
The day still starts with coffee. As an apprentice it was iced. Now, at forty, it is a minimum of two strong blacks. Then the work. About four complete barrels a day. Bending and toasting in the cooler hours, finishing in the afternoon. Office and promotional work fit around it. Before Covid the public tours were a bigger part of the week. Now the cellar-door ambassadors bring people through while the coopers keep working. Customers see the making. They get a closer sense of what they are buying.
The trade has not needed to change because it was already finished. That is the part Shaun keeps returning to. They got it right then. We still use it now.
The pair on his feet through the day was the 700 Trojan Safety Boot Claret. Enough protection for the tools and the timber. Quiet enough that the hands stay on the work.
Steel Cap Safety Boots
The cooperage floor is tools, timber and heat. Shaun wears the 700 Trojan Safety Boot Claret - steel toe for the work that needs it, slip-resistant tread for the floor under the staves. Quiet enough that the hands stay on the oak.
The rest of the steel-cap range follows the same idea in different builds and colours: Hercules and Apollo. Protection where the day asks for it. Comfort that doesn’t ask for attention.
700 Trojan Safety Boot Claret
906 Boulder Boot Claret
795 Hercules Safety Boot Claret
701 Apollo Safety Boot Black
