Divide by the right number of bottles
A 225 litre barrique holds 300 bottles of 750 mL, and it does not give you 300 bottles. Six percent goes to evaporation, topping brought in from elsewhere, lees at racking and the heel that will not pump, so 282 come out. Every dollar of the barrel is spread over 282, not 300 — a six percent increase in the cooperage cost per bottle that never appears on an invoice and is real all the same.
That is before the working life question. An 1,100 dollar barrique with 150 dollars of resale consumes 950 dollars of capital. Over four vintages that is 237.50 a fill, or 84.2 cents a bottle. Add 45 dollars a year of racking, cleaning and floor space and it is 1.00 dollar a bottle exactly.
The first fill costs ten times the tenth
Charge the whole 950 dollars plus the working cost to a single vintage and it is 3.53 dollars a bottle. Spread it over ten and it is 50 cents. That is the entire argument about oak programmes reduced to arithmetic, and it is why two wineries quoting their barrel cost can be a factor of seven apart without either of them being wrong.
The curve is steep at the short end and flat at the long end. Going from one vintage to two saves 1.68 dollars a bottle. Going from nine to ten saves under four cents. So the decision that matters is whether a barrel gets a second and third fill, and after about the fifth the arithmetic has stopped caring.
Used oak is not automatically cheaper
The page prints both columns and names the lower one, and the answer is not always the one people expect. A 300 dollar used barrel with no resale over three vintages is 100 dollars a fill, or 35.5 cents a bottle of cooperage. A 1,100 dollar new barrel with 150 back over eight vintages is 118.75 a fill, or 42.1 cents. Over four vintages instead of eight it is 84.2 cents, and the used one wins comfortably.
So the comparison turns on the two lives, not on the two prices. Change either life by a vintage and the ranking can flip. That is why the page recalculates it from whatever four numbers are in the form rather than asserting a rule, and why the sentence it prints says on cost alone: what new oak does to a wine is the actual reason anybody buys it, and it is not a number.
The rotation, in whole barrels
Forty barrels on a four vintage life means ten bought a year, 11,000 dollars out and 1,500 back. Put an odd life on it — forty barrels over seven vintages — and the smoothed figure is 5.71 barrels a year while the invoice is for six in some years and five in others. Both numbers are printed, because the smoothed one is the right one for a cost per bottle and the whole one is the right one for a cheque.
The programme cost per bottle comes out equal to the per-barrel figure once the rotation is steady, which is a useful check rather than a coincidence: the same capital divided the same way. If the two ever disagree on your own numbers, the life and the count have got out of step.
Questions people ask
How much does a barrel cost per bottle of wine?
Take the purchase price less what you get back at the end, divide by the vintages it works, add the yearly cost of handling it, and divide by the bottles that actually come out. An 1,100 dollar barrique with 150 dollars of resale over four vintages, plus 45 dollars a year of working cost, over 282 bottles is 1.00 dollar a bottle. Change the life to eight and it is 58 cents.
Why 282 bottles and not 300?
Because 225 litres goes in and less comes out. Evaporation, topping wine that came from another vessel, lees left at each racking and the heel that will not pump all take a share — 6 percent in the form, which is your own figure to replace. The barrel cost is divided by what you bottle, not by what the vessel holds, and forgetting that understates cooperage by whatever your loss rate is.
Is a used barrel cheaper than a new one?
It depends on the two working lives more than on the two prices, and the page works it out from your figures rather than asserting an answer. A 300 dollar used barrel over three vintages beats an 1,100 dollar new one over four; the same new barrel over eight vintages is very close to level with it. And cost is the wrong axis for the actual decision — new oak is bought for what it does to the wine, which no calculator can price.
How many barrels do I buy each year?
The cellar count divided by the working life, which for forty barrels on a four vintage rotation is ten a year. Odd lives give fractions — forty over seven is 5.71 — and barrels come whole, so the page prints the smoothed figure for costing and the rounded one for the order. Real cellars also buy in lumps to match a vintage size rather than evenly.
Should I count the wine lost in the barrel as a cost too?
Once, not twice. This page uses the loss to work out how many bottles the barrel gives, which is where it belongs for a cooperage figure. If you are also running the tons to cases calculator, the same loss is already reducing your finished volume there. Charging the lost wine as a dollar cost here as well would count it in both places.