ROLL OUT THE BARRELS: PERRY COUNTY COMPANY MAKES `KITS' FOR WINE BARRELS

Jay Young installed down pins and river reed between sections of oak staves that will become the lids for the barrels.

Jim Sauer, production manager at Seguin-Moreau USA in Perryville, stood near the wood yard where stacks of oak are watered with an automatic sprinkler and will dry for up to 18 months before the wood can be processed.

PERRYVILLE -- It starts with Napa Valley grapes and winds up in barrels made from Perryville white oak.

A Perry County manufacturing company that produces barrel staves and tops has a big hand in the taste of wines produced abroad as well, including in South America, France and Australia.

"A big part in the taste of wine is determined from the barrel it is stored in," said Tom Webber, production manager and chief financial officer of Seguin-Moreau USA, Inc., based in Napa, Calif.

"The size of the barrel, the type and age of the wood in the barrel and the length of storage time all influence the taste of wine."

One of newest industries in Perry County is a branch facility of Seguin-Moreau USA, Inc., which produces wine barrels.

Sequin-Moreau's Missouri branch is located alongside Highway 61 north of Perryville and includes a 20,000-square-foot building used for production of barrel staves.

"We knew that white oak was available in the Perryville area," said Webber. "This was the first requirement for us to locate there."

Jim Sauer, manager of the Perry County operation, was previously a Perryville carpenter.

"What we do here is make a barrel kit," said Sauer. "We do the staves and the heads (tops and bottoms) and ship them to California."

The local operation currently employs 12 persons.

"We produce 50 to 55 barrels a day," said Sauer. "When the parts get to California, they put them together and do what they call `toasting' to swell and seal the barrels against leakage."

The Perry County operation opened in September 1993, but because of the long process used in curing did not ship its first kits to California until November 1994.

"We are really pleased with our Perry County operation and with the people we have hired there," said Webber.

The white oak found in this part of the country is a favorite of wine producers throughout the world, and visits to the Perryville area are not unusual.

Only two weeks ago, Bernard Cordier, president of Sequin-Moreau Cooperage, Inc., of Cognac, France, was in Perryville to visit Sequin-Moreau USA, a subsidiary of the 150-year old French cooperage company which produces barrels sold throughout the world.

The Napa, Calif., office was established 10 years ago, and the Perry County facility was set up about two years ago to produce the white oak staves.

Perry County staves are now shipped to California, but future plans indicate the company may start milling and producing wine barrels itself.

The local plant is producing 1,400 to 1,500 staves and 100 to 110 barrel heads a day.

Each barrel consists of 28 to 30 staves and two heads.

The production of wine barrels is no simple task.

The Perryville Stave Company, a Perry County sawmill operation, purchases the raw wood from timber companies and saws it into rough staves. "We buy the rough staves from that company, and start our process from there," said Webber.

The process, said Webber, involves air drying and aging the staves in their rough form for about two years.

"At that point, the stave is ready for machinery," he said. "The stave is shaped, top and bottom."

The staves are wider in the middle than at the ends, which gives a wooden barrel its belly bulge.

This shape increases the strength of the barrel. The heads (top and bottom) of the barrel are flat wooden circles that fit into groves near the ends of the staves.

Most wooden barrels are used to store wine.

The wooden barrels have a bung (hole), and a bung cork or plug used to fill the hole.

The Perryville staves are sent to Napa and a 29,000-square-foot facility where the barrels are completed.

Wineries pay up to $500 each for barrels.

The production of staves and barrels is much different now from past years.

Skilled workers call "coopers" made barrels by hand for hundreds of years. Now barrel manufacturers use labor-saving machines, and cooperage (cask-making) has become a much larger industry.

During a recent year, Italy and France, two big wine-making nations, each produced more than two billion gallons of wine each. With each barrel holding about 31 gallons of wine, that translates into more than 130 million barrels between the two countries each year.

In the U.S., about a half-billion barrels of wine are produced each year, with 90 percent of the total made in California. Much of that is produced in the Napa Valley, home of the U.S. operation of Seguin-Moreau USA, Inc.