Seguin Moreau USA

The 2026 Napa Valley barrel auction was one for the books! 

🙏 Mark Canepa for snapping these winemakers and vintners in action 📸🍇🍷

The oak timber we use for our large containers/tanks is set apart and specially aged in our Cognac woodyard … we utilize some of the pieces that are not used in cask production for the Exception range of oak alternative products

These highlight the very best of French oak—blocks, sticks, staves, chips and finishing bricks—all in their own manner maintaining wine’s original fruity expression and aromatic complexity while bringing sweetness and mouthfeel

Golden glow of the oak grain

Celebrating the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris and longtime winery client Chateau Montelena Winery—one of the Napa Valley wineries that changed the wine world forever on May 24, 1976

We are so proud to work with them and to note this extraordinary marker of history, craftsmanship and spirit of American wine

To many, many more years of legendary winemaking 🍇🍷

Our ELEMENT oak barrel range reflects our deeply rooted values of respect, quality and know-how using wood, water and fire 🌳💧🔥

Offered in F1, F2 and V1 toasts, they preserve wine’s fruit, freshness and terroir characteristics:

Steam-bending of V1 aims to retain as much fresh and black fruits as possible from wine, as well as floral notes. On the palate, tannins are more present during early stages of aging, while helping to preserve a marked freshness in later stages. This barrel is ideally suited for wines with higher alcohol levels, maintaining balance effectively

F1 respects and showcases fruit and structure. It offers density on the palate and wonderful balance between tension and sweetness, ensuring a lingering finish

In F2 tannic sensations are integrated more quickly, giving an airier structure and more solid tannins than F1 and enhancing spicy & toasted notes

April showers brought April flowers this year in Napa

Classic through any decade—and Selection and Premium too

Our range of French oak barrels in tight grain, semi-tight grain and extra-tight grain is all available as standard 2-year aged wood as well as 3-year (extended age)

Tight-grain oak’s porosity allows for minute amounts of evaporation and oxygenation, helping round tannins and develop aromatics in barreled wines

All the way back in 2006—master coopers Douglas Rennie and Andy Byars taking a break from coopering to pose for the camera 📸

NEW for 2026: Napa-coopered QTT barrels

QTT barrels lend sweetness on the mid-palate from lingering sensations of QTT molecules—a family of oak compounds that play a key role in sensory profiles of barrel-aged wines and are responsible for the sensation of “sugariness”/sweetness in dry wines

Study of QTT extraction when maturing wines in contact of oak:
Quercotriterpenosides (QTT) are a family of sweet-flavored compounds that were first found in oak (Marchal, 2011). These molecules have a very low taste detection threshold (590 μg/L for QTT I). The first results obtained regarding QTTs (Marchal et al., 2011) showed that these molecules are stable over time, as the compounds have been detected in wines matured in oak barrels after several years in bottle. However, the kinetics of their extraction process remains poorly understood. To tackle this problem, work has been conducted to study how these compounds are released from different pieces of oak, compared with wood compounds that are already well known.

STUDY:
Par Andrei Prida (a), Thomas Oui (b), Benoît Verdier (a), Delphine Winstel (c), Axel Marchal (c)
(a) Tonnellerie Seguin Moreau, Avenue de Gimeux, CS 10225 Merpins.
(b) Groupe ICV Centreoenologique, 6, route de Carpentras, 84190, Beaumes-de-Venise