Our cooperage is still very much run along traditional lines, so whilst we have invested in machinery such as laser guided machining to produce are staves and a semi-automatic press to fit the staves, most of what we do as a barrels supplier in Portugal involves a hammer and a lot of skill from one…

The char is undoubtedly the most mystical part of barrel making and because we are a very traditional cooperage (we are based in Portugal), we treat it with the reverence it deserves. So that means that we do not use gas to char our barrels, rather we remove the heads from the barrel and set…

As with so many sectors in the global economy at the moment, cooperages are suffering from a shortage of a key raw material and there is no more important raw material for making a barrel than oak. Traditionally France is seen as the source of the finest oak on the planet and whilst there may…

Our cooperage is based not far from the Douro valley, so it is no coincidence that the majority of used barrels that we sell are from port wine – we do have a lot of customers who are unsure whether they should order ex ruby or ex tawny port barrels, so here we will go…

Whilst we supply a broad range of fortified wine barrels, including used madeira barrels, but also muscatel, sherry, brandy and cognac, our real speciality is used port wine barrels. One of the trickiest part of our job is sourcing the barrels from the port wine cellars when they have finished with them: typically what happens…

We offer four different levels of char for the new barrels we supply – light, medium, heavy and extra-heavy (or alligator). These different levels of char are achieved by how long the inside of the barrel is burnt for and the process is a very interesting one. The char is a different process to the…

We try not to be judgemental at LusoBarrel, so if ice baths are your thing, then who are we to criticise? We had a client recently who is a trainer and wanted to help his athletes recovery, so he asked us to supply him with a used 500 litre wine barrel, with a removable lid…

Getting the right wood and then ageing it correctly is without doubt the single most important step in a cooperage for making wooden barrels. If the raw material is not right then the barrel that comes out of it at the end, will certainly not be right. Oak has of course been the wood of…

When we receive a load of used port wine barrels from the cellars where they have been ageing they can be in various of states of disrepair. Typically there will be a few broken staves, hoops that need replacing and an exterior that needs sanding to clean up the appearance. Our job is to assess…

We are living in an unprecedented time when it comes to the variety and innovation of the distilled drinks sector – much of it started with the craft sector, but now the big players have joined the party, offering all sorts of exotic flavour options to more traditional spirits. As a result we have seen…