Here’s what a wine needs now – concrete

The forward-thinking winery’s vessel of choice is the concrete vat

Concrete was once the building material of choice for Le Corbusier’s bright modernist future, before becoming a cold symbol of dystopia and then rehabilitated for polite society in the 2000s. It’s been a curiously similar story with concrete in wine: back in the early 20th century, a bank of spotless concrete tanks was very much the thing for your futuristic, forward-looking winery.

As a material, it was easier to clean, more hardwearing, better insulated and cheaper than oak, which began to seem inefficient, pre-industrial and hopelessly unprogressive by comparison. By the 1980s, concrete was itself starting to look dated. Stainless steel vats, with whizzy temperature controls, available in all manner of sizes, were the kit to have, making a style of lively, fruit-driven wine that proved hugely popular. Oak, which had never gone away, was also very much back in favour, its ability to soften wine, and bring toast and vanilla flavours, now a stylistic choice to brag about.