Nadalié

The house

The cooperage began in Montpellier, where Auguste Nadalié opened it in 1902. Later the family moved it to Ludon, at the southern end of the Médoc vineyards. Jean-Jacques Nadalié came to America in 1978, urged by the Napa vintner Ric Forman, who had met his father. He and Jacqueline Nadalié founded a cooperage at Calistoga, in the Napa Valley, in 1980, with Duane Wall; first called Tonnellerie Française, it is now Nadalié USA, the name it took when Wall retired. The family also bought an estate apart from the cooperage, Château Beau Rivage, in the Haut-Médoc, in 1995, and Christine Nadalié runs it.

By 2010 the 5th generation, led by Stéphane Nadalié, ran the house. It had cooperages in the United States, Australia and Chile, felled its own trees, split its oak by hand and left the staves to the weather for 2 years. In 2013 it made about 160 barrels a day at Ludon; at Calistoga, 16 coopers, 5 of them masters, made 60 a day, in American oak from a Pennsylvania mill that Nadalié USA owned.

The house has also backed the research of the University of Bordeaux on oak. Kléopatra Chira, an enologist of the university’s research unit, published a study in 2017 of how the toasting of a barrel changes the wine; Nadalié paid for it and gave the wood. She and María Reyes González-Centeno signed a chapter in 2020 on the phenolic compounds of grapes and wine, under the names of the university and of Tonnellerie Nadalié.

In September 2018 the Nadalié group and the cooperages of the Charlois family came together in a new group, Oak Nation, with Stéphane Nadalié on its management committee. The company at Ludon, until then Tonnellerie Ludonnaise, took the name Tonnellerie Nadalié that year, and the Charlois group counts Nadalié and Nadalié USA among its houses from 2018. Since May 4, 2022 Black Oak, a Charlois company, has chaired Tonnellerie Nadalié. Oak Add In, a branch at Ludon, makes oak chips for the cellar. For the 2022 vintage Château Laroque, in Saint-Émilion, worked with 5 coopers, Nadalié among them.

At a glance

Kind

Cooperage

Based in

Ludon-Médoc

Founded

1902, by Auguste Nadalié

Owner

Charlois group, through Oak Nation, since 2018

Abroad

Calistoga, California, 1980

Brands

Nadalié; Nadalié USA; Oak Add In

In the record

Laroque, 2022 vintage