Unearthing Treasures in Wood

Ger Buckley

Imagination was fired up one well-spent afternoon in Victoria Island, Lagos with Ger Buckley, the Head Cooper for Jameson Irish Whiskey – on a trumpeted Lagos tour – as he painted with words vivid imagery of the doggedness behind his multi-generational craftsmanship in  coopering for a famed whiskey

brand. Yinka Olatunbosun writes

No one could have guessed with accuracy what the content of his hand luggage he wheeled in with ease was till he opened it. Heavy work tools – aged – yet efficient in delivering the best casks and barrels to mature whiskey came into view. The conversation left one salivating as though Ger Buckley had traded his craftsmanship for the role of a salesman.

This Irish foreman in the whiskey business has been in the trade for about 40 years. He is a fifth-generation Midleton Cooper who has used the same methods and tools as his grandfather. Since the age of 16, he had worked with his hand. Born into the generational love of forestry, Cooper wears the shoes his father left some years ago. As the Head Cooper for Jameson Irish Whiskey, he shared the tales of his craft- a profession that is fast shrinking in size in our highly digitised world.

For starters, Buckley’s job as the head cooper involves overseeing the supply and maintenance of all the barrels that Jameson whisky is matured in. He makes sure that the distillery’s one million oak casks are in peak condition at all times.

That afternoon, every sentence from him was important because it doesn’t exist in the school curriculum. It evolved from his years of experience, learning and re-learning in the cooperage.

The interview in itself felt like a masterclass in whisky making.

“75% of a whiskey’s taste comes from the wood – so the wood and the distillation process have an equal effect on the taste,’’ he began, setting the tone for understanding why the wood is so important to whiskey.

You may have stumbled once or twice on barrels without paying particular attention to the shape or even the ingenuity involved in building each one. Without hesitation, Buckley explained how coopering starts.

“You have to decide what types of woods you can use or not use. Some woods are poisonous. The oak is the king of all the woods. It’s the most valuable. It enhances the taste of whiskey. About 75 per cent of the taste is from the wood. Sometimes, when I open up a barrel, I invite people to smell it. It is a fantastic smell of the barrel from the whiskey. What you smell is the oak.”

Mental travel uncorks a bottle of Ireland’s most popular whiskey; pours into a transparent glass cup and as the lips part to take a sip, Buckley’s voice jolts one’s mind back to reality.

While explaining the concept of toasting the wood, he showed how that process contributes to the classification of the whiskey as double or triple-distilled.

“The main cask we use is the American barrel. One is Europe. They give different flavours. The American barrel is sweet. It gives vanilla flavour. The way we treat the barrel is different. When you make a barrel for the first time, you heat the wood to bend it.

“This is me making a new barrel,” he said, showing pictures of himself at work.  “You can see that it’s quite straight. We lay the fire inside and we heat the wood to bend it. That’s the first cooking of the wood. It’s really important that you cook.

“What you’re doing is to bring out the flavours in the oak. We set the fire to make the wood black and get a lot more sweetness. We come back a second time and we do it again. We call it double distilled.”

With over two million barrels in the warehouse, a cooper is perhaps one of the world’s most hardworking craftsmen as Buckley’s account continued.

“After the heating, we lost about 40 per cent of the whiskey through evaporation. The air passes through and the casks interact with the environment where they are placed,” he revealed.

In his introduction to whiskey making, Buckley made a revelation: “The first thing you do when you make a whiskey in the morning is to make a beer. When you make a beer, you distil the beer. The Egyptians have been distilling for thousands of years to make perfumes. It was found in Egypt that the natural yeast in the air can cause fermentation.”

That was a moment to be a proud African. But the black continent is not the only resource spot for the time-tested cooper.

“My job is to go to Kentucky to make sure that the barrel is double charred. The cooking of the wood is very important and there are different levels to it. There’s an alligator charred where the wood looks like alligator skin.”

Indeed, creating that distinct taste in Jameson whiskey came by accident. But the craft itself has been sustained over time. Buckley delved into what his day looks like at the cooperage where he scrutinizes every barrel.

“There may be leaks,” he said. “Some barrels may be broken. I would repair the big cherry casks. As time went on, I became the foreman- the head cooper and my responsibility included making sure that all the barrels in the warehouse are properly maintained and in good condition. Every barrel that comes to Midleton is handled by a cooper and examined visually for any defects. What we don’t want is to put a barrel in a warehouse and have a leak. Wood is still wood. It can still break at any time.”

Usually, Buckley and his team would travel to other cooperages in the world to source for barrels.

“We visited France, Spain and America and we would visit forests. We are very mindful of where we get our wood. When we get new barrels, we want the farmer to be certified to ensure that the forest is sustainable and the wood is traceable, and it is from a healthy forest.”

Beyond felling trees, Buckley is also championing sustaining practice in coopering by encouraging more trees to be planted to replenish the ones that had been fuelled.

“Any barrel made from poisonous trees will make poisonous whiskey. We make barrels from palm trees and oak, and we use different oaks for different flavours,” he added.

Realising that the craft may go extinct in time, Buckley and his contemporaries are committed to training more people in the craft of coopering.

“Our warehouse programme is regarded as the number one cooperage management in the world. It’s been recognised in whisky magazines. Every time you use a barrel, you get less contribution to oak. At the third fill, you’re going to get less. Third fill barrel is important. If you use a first fill-in whiskey, it will be too much oak. It will be overpowering. You want to use some older wood to blend it to get the balanced taste.”

Buckley said his tools – after retirement – might be preserved at a museum.

“The tools speak to me every day. They are the same tools I started with almost 40 years ago. I have no new tools. The tools here with me are not the ones I use on a daily basis. I wouldn’t let those tools leave my shop. Those tools have sentimental value to me. My old tools belonged to my granddad and they were passed on to me.

“I have two daughters but maybe a grandson may come along. One is in Medicine and the other is in Law. I have trained two coopers over the last ten years and my latest trainee qualified in March. It’s not university training. There are so few coopers in the world right now. Maybe someone can come along and take up the trade. That company may be anxious to see someone in my family take up the coopering. That would be seven generations.”

Aside from keeping the craft as a family tradition, Buckley is keen on sharing the knowledge so that the craftsmanship is sustained.

“At other cooperages, I do masterclasses and I show them tools that have never been seen. I loaned them for five months before I got it back.”

Although coopering is male-dominated, Buckley acknowledged the growth in the population of women coopers.

“I would have no issue having a woman as the next cooper because there are a lot of machines that can be used now for coopering that does all the heavy work. It is still physical but it is not beyond the bounds of a woman cooper. The funny thing is that the craftspeople that I have met who are women are better, more meticulous, and more careful, and I think the same will happen if we have a woman cooper.

“In the past, a cooper’s hand was swollen, bruised, with cuts. When a cooper goes out to have a few drinks, he could dress up in a beautiful suit but you couldn’t see his hands because he’d fold them. If you saw his hands, you would know how hard he had worked with them. The hands always gave them away.

For Buckley, every barrel is different and has its unique challenge. Overcoming those obstacles, he finds solace in repurposing the barrels as utility items.

“I make furniture from my barrels. I made this for my granddaughter. I made toys from barrels. I made chairs, tables, and candle holders from barrels. It’s good for fencing and floors. I have made floors out of barrels. There is no waste for the barrels.” While in Lagos, Buckley relished every bit of the urban life and its assortment of personable people.

It was his second time in Nigeria and his primary assignment was to enjoy a five-day event curated daily by Jameson partners, showcasing how Jameson is distilled and how to enjoy the brand with friends.

The event, which ran from September 27 to October 1, was christened The Jameson Distillery on Tour (JDOT) and held at the iconic National Theatre, Orile Iganmu Lagos. It featured live music, gourmet food, fashion, skating and the ultimate Jameson party.

“The people are friendly and amazing. Nigerians are really good-looking people, which makes me feel really small. The last time I was here, the guy staying with me at the hotel was Anthony Joshua. He was really friendly. His arms are like three sizes of my legs. He is about six foot six. I wish I looked like that,” he said lightheartedly. His face took a serious shade when he added: “If Nigeria has the infrastructure that you’ve got in the US, they will dominate many fields.”