Love the taste of whiskey? Thank an oak tree. Excerpt: The Flavor of Wood.

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How a tree becomes a barrel—and a barrel influences your favorite spirits.
© Artur Cisar-Erlach
▼ Historically the wooden barrel has been the world’s most important shipping container, only comparable to today’s large iron shipping containers, the holding vessels of our globalized consumer society. Like the shipping container, the wooden barrel has been used to transport an extremely wide variety of commodities, ranging from apples, gunpowder, salted meat, cement, coins, flour, fish, molasses and pickles to tobacco, linens, tar, seeds, vinegar, potatoes, oysters and, of course, beer, wine, and whisky, the transport of which they are still used for today.
Driving through the center of Waidhofen an der Ybbs in Lower Austria feels like taking a trip back in time. My GPS insisted I drive down a narrow and increasingly steep road at which end the Cooperage Schneckenleitner supposedly was located. Still unsure and rather alarmed by the ever-narrowing road right next to the river, suddenly I was confronted by a scene right out of a medieval play. Partly situated under the arcs of a tall stone bridge was, indeed, a cooperage. I saw rows of wooden barrels, piles of staves, and people hammering iron rings around half-finished barrels.
Once properly re-parked, I was finally ready to find the cooperage’s young manager, Paul Schneckenleitner, Jr., with whom I had spoken on the phone the day before. Quite proudly he told me that it had been in the family since 1880, which meant that he was now the fifth generation running it.
Contrary to my belief that the arrival of the tree trunks was the starting point of Schneckenleitner’s work, I was curious to learn that the barrel-making process starts with the tree still standing in the forest, when the experienced cooper chooses the right trees for his barrels. Schneckenleitner still relies on his father and uncle for this sensitive task; they travel personally from woodlot to woodlot selecting suitable trees in Austria, Germany, and even France.
Trees must be felled during the cold winter months,  (▪ ▪ ▪)

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