Here’s one way to savor that great chardonnay or syrah vintage.
Macari Vineyards in Mattituck offers custom table tops cut from the same oak barrels used to ferment their wines.
Vineyard manager Joe Macari, 25, uses a reciprocating saw to remove the barrel top and attaches it to a metal or wood base salvaged from yard sales. The tables are only available for purchase at Macari’s Mattituck and Cutchogue tasting room and cost between $350 and $800.
The imported barrels used to make them, made from either French or Hungarian oak, cost between $1,100 and $1,800 when purchased brand new. They are used for about three or four seasons before they are no longer usable.
“I’ve been saving these,” Macari said pointing to several dozen empty barrels in his Cutchogue workshop. “Eventually the oak flavors stop coming out of them and they can no longer be used.”
Macari, whose grandmother, grandfather and father own the vineyard, sands the wood before staining it and sealing it with polyurethane. The process takes about a week, he said.
His mother, Alexandra Macari, suggested he sell them at the vineyard when he first made one for himself about five years ago.
“We sell out of them so quickly,” she said. “Because we are so tourist driven, visitors see it as a novelty. It’s something from the winery and something the wine was in and people enjoy that creativity.”
The younger Macari also fashions votive holders out of the oak, which are available for sale in the tasting room ($35.)
With the harvest season approaching, he has little time to devote to his workshop, but Macari expects to pick up the saw again in the off-season.
“I do it in my down time,” he said. “It’s really an art and it’s relaxing to do. I enjoy it.”