Max Jensen
Eltham, Vic

Cellar door sales counter
at Bress Winery & Cidery, Harcourt

‘Early this year I was helping my daughter and son-in-law renovate the winery they had just bought. My son-in-law suggested using some of the old wine barrels sitting under a gum tree to construct the sales counter at a winery that he and my daughter had recently bought. I am a founding member of the Eltham & District Woodworking Club and welcome a challenge. I was hooked!

‘On dismantling two barrels to get enough staves for my project I discovered that no two staves were the same. They were curved both in length and width, tapered from the centre to the ends and outside the barrel to the inside and they were invariably twisted. Whilst I was able to do some machining, each stave had to be hand planed because of irregularities. The dismantled counter was assembled on site. Of the 39 pieces, I only had to plane 0.05mm off one of the end pieces and cut the sill to fit the wall.

‘Now customers can purchase their wine straight from the ‘barrel’.’