From the hum of a coffee machine in Mr Fang’s office came the first surprise. He laughed that roasting beans is much like toasting oak, and poured a cup that had undergone a second fermentation inside a cask before roasting. It carried a trace of his cooperage’s craft, inventive, but only a small spark compared with the great engine of innovation he drives in oak and whisky.
China is the world’s second most diverse region for oak, yet its overall forest coverage is relatively modest. National conservation policies also impose strict limits on logging. The only wood permitted for cooperage comes from selective thinning, such as reducing density when too many saplings grow too close together, removing infected or pest-damaged trees, or clearing corridors to prevent fire. The timber yielded from these practices is often of modest quality. On rarer occasions, large infrastructure projects like highways, high-speed rail, or water reservoirs require clear-cutting, which can provide oak suitable for fine barrels. In contrast with the large-scale harvesting seen in the United States or Europe, securing high-quality oak in China is an altogether tougher challenge.
Jisheng Fang is no stranger to difficulty. He had already spent more than a decade studying native oak species when he discovered that, despite the rich diversity, China had no cooperage industry to speak of — not even an official registry for such enterprises. Licensing procedures were slow and uncertain, and it was only in 2007 that Wolin managed to secure approval, beginning operations the following year. Then came the global financial crisis. One of the original investors, Alan Conigrave, stepped back from the venture, though he continued to lend technical guidance until the Covid-19 pandemic. Just as the partners considered abandoning the project, an opportunity arose for Fang to assume full responsibility. In 2009, he officially took the helm of the business, carrying it forward through challenges that had already tested its very existence.
“The purpose is always to unlock oak casks that could represent Chinese character,” Fang says. Born and raised in Yantai, Shandong, a city immersed in winemaking culture, he believed a new industry needed its own sense of terroir. “Only with distinctive traits can a product claim its place in the international market. That was my hope for Chinese wine, but it was lost amid the industry’s decline.” Despite years of effort, he could not persuade the domestic wine sector to embrace native oak. “Why not cooperate with French wine?” he mused, a reminder that Fang remains open to collaboration and driven by enduring ambition.
In 2014, Wolin shifted focus. Together with marketing manager Shuxin Cong, Wolin developed China’s first oaked beer — not in a brewery, but in a cooperage. Drawing on techniques from established craft beer regions abroad, he refined them for local use and introduced the idea to domestic brewers, who gradually began to adopt Wolin’s casks.
By 2017, attention turned to whisky. “If 60 to 70 per cent of whisky’s flavour comes from the cask,” Fang reasoned, “then I must explore how Chinese oak can create something different.” In 2018, Wolin worked with Pernod Ricard’s early team at the Chuan to test suitable casks, ultimately selecting Mongolian oak from the Changbai Mountains. In 2021, Wolin supplied Shangri-La oak from Yunnan to Diageo’s Yuntuo Distillery, further proof that Fang’s vision was taking root in whisky’s future, showcasing the potential of China’s native oak species.
“Europe and America are rich in vast oak forests, with centuries of coopering expertise. I don’t need to compete head-on in a meaningless way — Wolin is rooted in our own terroir,” Fang says with confidence. “Compared with the limited range of oak species used in Europe and America, where toasting, charring, or peating make only modest differences, Asia’s native oak potential in raw wood flavour is still largely untapped, offering a striking contrast in diversity.” China alone has more than a hundred oak species, offering extraordinary flavour diversity. Over the past decades, Fang has travelled widely, studying the distribution, flavour profiles, and sustainable harvesting of more than 200 oak (Quercus) sub-species, building first-hand data for a nascent Chinese cask industry.
One crucial clarification is highlighted by Fang: “Mizunara oak [Quercus mongolica var crispula] and Mongolian oak are not the same!” While both belong to the genus Quercus, they are distinct species, side by side rather
than one beneath the other. The common misconception that mizunara is an equivalent or sub-species of Mongolian oak is misleading. Sub-species status applies only to minor variations within one species. For instance, Mongolian oak in different parts of China may show small differences, yet genetic tests confirm they remain the same. Mizunara, by contrast, is a distinct and stabilised species with its own traits, acorn form, and flavour profile.
Scientific work — part of Wolin’s routine experiments — confirms these differences: although both carry woody aromas, Mongolian oak often recalls the scent of nutty, old wood furniture or temple incense, while mizunara is finer and sweeter. Each year the cooperage tests hundreds of barrels, from wood chips to glass-covered quarter casks to full-size casks, trialling different toast and char levels and ageing conditions. Fang often notes: “Research is Wolin’s driving force!” The results are recorded, tasted, and catalogued, building a flavour database that guides both clients and Wolin’s own innovation.
Asian oaks share another common trait: their vessel networks are more open, meaning liquid can move more easily through the grain than in tight-pored American white oak, hence the reputation for “leaky” barrels. Wolin’s solution is the so-called “piano-sticks” or “piano barrel” design, which tackles leakage with geometry rather than gimmicks. Each cask is built from very narrow staves, about the width of a piano key. The outer face of each stave is small, while the two side faces meet neighbouring staves under compression. If liquid seeps in from the inner surface, it tends to move sideways along the wood’s vessels. In a wide stave it can travel until it breaks out, but in a piano-key stave it quickly meets a seam, where pressure from the adjacent stave forces it closed. More seams and smaller outer faces mean far fewer continuous escape routes, so seepage drops dramatically even with the same wood. An added advantage is that coopers can select finer-ringed stock for flavour without being tied to wide-ring sections. The core idea is simple: change the stave width and joinery, and you change the leak physics.
Wolin has also patented a second technique, joining shorter sections of wood — two lengths of 40 or 60 centimetres combined to make a full metre, allowing otherwise unsuitable stock to be put to use. For distillers across Asia, the challenge is not only to master traditional coopering, but to innovate with timber that others might dismiss. Fang is determined to prove that Chinese oak can stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s best.
