The largest wood wine barrel

still in use in Europe is in a little Alsatian town called Ingersheim. It was built in 1880, made of oak, and is 4.5 m long and 4.2 m wide, with a storage capacity equivalent to 47,200 bottles. That's a whole lot of wine!

17 years ago, the wine cave that owns it had the unpleasant surprise of finding that one of the planks had broken and the barrel had lost 12,000 liters of wine overnight! It took a while to find a manufacturer that could produce an oak plank of 4.5m in length and 11cm thick to repair the barrel.

The guy standing in front of the barrel is about 6ft tall, so that gives you an idea of the size :)