Ever since he began making furniture (way back before “green” became the new black), our friend Cliff Spencer has focused on using reclaimed and FSC-certified materials. Based in L.A., he loves to rescue windfallen cypress and neglected mesquite, and he’s been known to dumpster dive in the name of cabinetry.
As die-hard leftoverists in the kitchen, we love this about Cliff’s work, so we were especially excited to hear that one of his recent projects involved transforming old wine staves into cabinets and a table.
Cliff gets a bi-monthly newsletter called CALMAX (California Materials Exchange), in which people from all over California offer used building materials. (Think dirt and composite decking and things that begin with the prefix “Class II Industrial…”) Sometimes the people offering the materials ask for money, but often they’re just looking to have stuff hauled away for free.
Cliff’s had considered CALMAX stuff in the past (some douglas fir beams, for example), but he didn’t have the space for them in his shop. But when he saw that a Napa winery was offering wine-soaked oak, he jumped. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with the wood, but he knew he wanted it. He and his wife Leigh, a graphic designer, were headed up to San Francisco for a design conference, so they stopped off at the winery and loaded up their truck. After a few months of fiddling with the wood and trying to figure out how to work with it and to what end, Cliff hired a really big truck to haul down the rest.
The wood is white oak and it was used by the winery during fermentation to lend flavor to the wine, which was aged in stainless steel vats. It arrived in L.A. coated with sugars and residue from the wine. (The shop reeked for weeks.) The 1/2-inch-thick oak staves are stained through and through by the grapes — pinot noir makes for the darkest stain while pinot grigio leaves the lightest — and so the walnut color of Cliff’s table and cabinets is entirely due to the wine. Except for the non-toxic adhesives and the plant-based finishes, these cabinets are made from 100% recycled materials.
We’re looking forward to the day when we have a proper Cookthink test kitchen so that Cliff can build it out. In the meantime, we just ooh and ahh at the pictures on his website.