A VINTAGE FLOOR
WITH YOUR WINE, PERHAPS?
A Room With Taste, This former San Raphael’s winery and now a private residence featured an old basement space later cleared out and climatized for a private cellar and tasting room. The tasting room’s atmosphere is established by the appropriate floor made from wine barrels by Fontenay.
Fontenay Wood’s Vintage Barrel Collection has been used in homes and wineries for floors and also has been adapted for countertops and tables.
The idea for a Vintage Barrel Collection –– flooring actually made from authentic wine casks –– came about as third-generation woodcrafter and flooring contractor Rick Merwin and his wife were enjoying some of California’s finest wines. It began three years ago with the simple thought that Merwin could do more with these barrels than just turn them into planters. Within a year, the idea was on the market and on the floors of some noted wineries.
What better way to celebrate not only the vintages, but also the cask, its wood and history than to have an expert in intricate borders, inlays and custom patterns like Merwin utilize such charactered quarter-sawn French and American oak wood reclaimed from the California wine country?
The process to convert the barrel pieces into usable hardwood is proprietary, but it involves about four months of yard drying or conditioning before the pieces head to a kiln and tongue-and-groove forming. The results are pieces that still show the rare vintage markings of each winemaker. Sometimes the pieces can give off a “nose” for up to a year.
“It’s quite interesting because you can tell where the cask was made, who made it, who bought it and even what forest in France the lumber came from. It’s pretty intriguing,” he said.
For a wine connoisseur, the attraction of having such a “wine floor” extends from the vintage to the wood. Merwin says ’97 and ’99 were great vintage years, and having floors made from barrels marked ’99 is special to someone who collects wine.
Right now, the company Fontenay Wood sells primarily to wine cellars, private homeowners and occasionally to flooring dealers for special projects, but the product, as Merwin says, is neither cheap nor easy to work with if one doesn’t understand the intricacies, such as special adhesives (he favors Bostix) and finishes (BonaKemi Traffic). “You need a good-quality hard finish to preserve patina, and you can’t sand; otherwise you lose the markings.” At three years, he recommends a protective re-coat.
The vintage Barrel Collection is one of three offered by Fontenay. The others are Dove Cote, planks handcrafted for perfect balance and Old World charm, and Abbaye distinctive patterns and parquetry.
