HISTORY

In the late 90s, while working at Meridian Winery, one of California’s largest wineries, Roger Burson, Quality Wine Barrels founder, saw a need for obtaining reasonably priced, high-quality used wine barrels from trustworthy sources.

Roger decided to create a completely new market niche in the wine industry: a used wine barrel exchange that put barrels still suitable for wine storage back in production instead of being cut up for planters or scrapped.

Roger’s goal: Provide winemakers a selection of pre-inspected, certified, used barrels to reliably add to their oak program at a far lower cost than new barrels and to save tens of thousands of high-quality barrels from the saw blade before their time.

To ensure the barrels were the high quality required for great wine, Roger created a rigorous 5 Point Inspection process, and reconfigured a name-brand planer tool to efficiently and precisely shave any wine staining from barrel staves.

This 5-Point Inspection and Certification process has been copied by others and has become the gold standard to guarantee each barrel is perfect for crafting wine, beer, and other spirits.

All barrels unsuitable for wine and spirit storage are hand-crafted by the Quality Wine Barrels’s team into planters for the garden, the patio, or any other place that needs that distinctive barrel ambiance.

Today, Recoopering is an integral part of the QWB barrel recycling program. For over twenty years, Quality Wine Barrels has sold thousands of Used and Recoopered Barrels to wine and spirit makers across the world, tailoring barrels to year, type, and style for each winemaker, brewery, and distillery.

Today, Quality Wine Barrels continues to grow and is proud to be recognized as the first in the nation, and the most trustworthy barrel brokerage in the world.