Shaping Time: The Unsung Art of The Cooper

The influence of the cask on a spirit is one of the most talked about subjects in single malt Scotch whisky. Time in cask mellows the spirit, blessing it with a fuller body and greater complexity. And yet, for as much influence as the cask has on our dram, it’s surprising we don’t talk more about the work that goes into that centuries-old container. 

Although the oldest evidence we have of a wooden barrel is from an ancient Egyptian wall painting, Roman historian Pliny the Elder grants the origins of coopering in Europe to the Gauls. It feels fitting that the Celtic cousins of those who founded the art on this continent should also be the ones to perfect its use in the making of so fine a drink as Scotch. Whoever is responsible for its origins, the cask has gone on to shape empires. Much as Amazon could not have risen to rule modern-day commerce without the cardboard box, the world we know today could never have come to be without the humble wooden barrel. And whisky would just be...well...moonshine.

It’s funny to think that a modern, continuously innovating industry is still so dependent upon a piece of technology that has scarcely changed in thousands of years.  Be it sherry butt, hogshead, or port pipe, the construction of the cask is essentially the same: wooden staves held together by hoops and closed with heads of quarter-sawed timber. Basic though its form may be, its construction is no simple IKEA assembly. To learn more about this ancient art, photographer Oran Macleod and I visited Speyside Cooperage – the largest independent cooperage in the UK.  

Master Cooper Craig Lambie walks us through the workshop floor where the hard labour that goes into cask building reverberates through the bones of the casual observer: the vibrations of a dozen hammers pounding away ring in our ears. The utter focus of the coopers at work is tangible as well. This is not a place for daydreamers, sloths, or even, it feels, inquisitive journalists to mill about.  

We pass through the charring hall, where the sound of hammering gives way to the hiss of steam and roar of gas fires. Citrine-coloured mechanical arms rise up and down as casks move in and out of the charring chamber on automated conveyors, flames of amber and rust bursting from the floor beneath. Out back, a dozen stows rise up from the dirt three stories high – great pyramidal stacks of casks: some 75,000 or more awaiting repairs and returns. The smell is glorious. 

In the space of five minutes, I go from knowing virtually nothing about coopering to dodging men rolling and hammering away at barrels, flames and steam shooting from the floor, and casks being shuttled about mechanically. This is an all-sensory, educative immersion. And all of it against a backdrop of towering pyramids of casks making it look more like a dramatic Egyptian-Scottish stage set than a business’s staging area.  It’s a world that feels impossible – as if it should have been lost to time – yet here we are, watching the workings of one of the players in a global industry very much of today.  

Whatever Speyside Cooperage might feel like to the newcomer, it is very much an essential cog in the wine and whisky industries – instrumental to the success of countless distilleries and vineyards around the world. The cooperage was first opened in 1947 in Craigellache by the Taylor family, beginning with only six coopers. Sixty-one years later, with no one in the family to continue the business, they sold to the French cooperage company Tonnellerie Francois Freres. They now have branches in Alloa, Scotland as well as in Ohio and Kentucky, and provide casks for a large number of businesses across the globe. 

The cooperage employs 14 coopers, three foremen, and eight apprentices. The business has always relied on apprentices to learn and carry on the tradition and craft. Most begin their four-year apprenticeships at the age of 16. Four years may seem like a long time to learn to repair and assemble a cask, but this is a craft that still relies greatly on hand tools and skill. The apprentice is gifted his toolset by The Federation of Coopers when he begins, and learns each step of cask repair and rebuild through his experience on the work floor.  

When a Speyside apprentice completes his four-year training he’s celebrated with a local tradition, the 'Trussing of the Cooper'. The apprentice cooper is stripped to his undergarments, covered in treacle and feathers, put inside the last cask he completed, and rolled about the workshop. The embarrassment, at least, is made up for by the promise of a full-time career. 

99% of the casks that come through Speyside Cooperage are for repair – only a very small amount are produced new from scratch. Each cask is worked on by only one cooper through the entire process all the way to certification. This ensures the cooper knows every nook and cranny of the cask, and certifies that it’s fit for the years ahead. 

The cooper begins by taking the next cask in line and giving it a full inspection: brushing it down with a wire brush and looking for cracks, dents, and any other damages that are then marked with white chalk. Any casks beyond repair are set aside and later sold as scrap to crafters and furniture makers. 

Staves are replaced as needed. The assembly of the cask begins with the cooper carefully selecting specific staves and inserting them into a guide hoop. The staves are steamed to make them more pliable, then gathered with a top hoop, giving the cask its classic bulge shape. The bunghole is then drilled, and the cask is toasted and charred.  

Distilleries may order custom builds, general repairs, or ask to have the casks to go through the STR process: shaved, toasted, and re-charred (also known as “de-char, re-char”). This is a rejuvenation process that allows a distillery to get further use from an otherwise exhausted cask – the sugars and lignins of the toasted oak having been completely spent. The STR process involves shaving about 3mm of wood from the inside of the cask leaving a mix of slightly saturated and virgin oak. The cask is then toasted to caramelise the sugars and re-charred to open the wood, allowing the whisky to extract the flavours of the oak. Distilleries may even request a specific charring process – for example, 420° for 100 seconds – to bring out certain flavours. 

The heads of the cask are carefully selected by the cooper as they must fit perfectly. Astonishingly, freshwater reeds are still used today – fitted in the slot between the head and body of the cask to function like a gasket, swelling when in contact with liquid to prevent leaks. 

The cask must pass both a hoop test to ensure the hoops are on snug, and a pressure test to make sure it’s watertight. The pressure test is done by driving air at 16 psi plus two litres of water into the bunghole. If the cask fails either test, the cooper has to make further repairs. As he’s only paid once per cask, he’s incentivised to get it right the first time. One can imagine the frustrations this must present an apprentice in his first few years. An experienced cooper, however, can complete about 25 to 30 casks a day. Speyside’s own David McKenzie holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest-built 190-litre barrel: three minutes and three seconds.  

Our guide, Lynda, puts in several encouraging calls for female apprentices during the tour, saying she’d love to see a woman on the floor. I toy with the idea momentarily, but merely watching these coopers at work rolling 50-kilo casks and swinging two-kilo hammers about all day gives me sympathy aches. I can only imagine how they must feel at the end of their shift. (Although, Lynda does tell us that some of the younger ones go to the gym after work for “resistance training”.)

For those of you whisky lovers who have never visited a cooperage, I can thoroughly recommend it for the opportunity to experience the craftmanship behind the barrels we covet so much.  Until then, the next time you pour yourself a dram, raise it to the coopers whose sweat and skill have gone into shaping time.