Stave

A riven oak board shaped for cask-making, graded and traded by the size of vessel it was cut for.

A stave is where the cask hierarchy begins. Oak was split rather than sawn, following the grain so that the finished vessel would hold liquid without leaking, and the resulting boards were graded by the cask they suited: pipe staves for the largest, then hogshead, then barrel, each with customary lengths and a price to match. The trade was substantial and strategic, since a wine or brewing industry cannot function without coopers and coopers cannot function without seasoned oak. Baltic staves supplied Britain for centuries, later supplemented and then displaced by American white oak, which remains the source for whisky cask timber today. Staves were counted rather than measured by volume, though the counting conventions varied by port and are less well documented than the grades themselves.