Why does wine go into oak barrels?
Why does wine get aged in oak barrels?
It's a historical thing; before 1600s there were not glass bottles, so most wine was stored and solld in wooden barrels.
Though we've got lots of options to store and transport wine, however lots of us now like the taste of it. Oak barrels are used in modern wine as well as whisky making!
The Historical Significance of Oak Aging: Before the advent of glass bottles in the 1600s, wine found its home in wooden barrels—a testament to the historical roots of oak aging. While modern technology offers myriad storage options, the allure of oak persists, enriching both wine and whisky with its distinctive charm.
Before the advent of glass bottles in the 1600s, wine found its home in wooden barrels—a testament to the historical roots of oak aging. While modern technology offers myriad storage options, the allure of oak persists, enriching both wine and whisky with its distinctive charm.
How do Oak Barrels Affect the Wine?
Oak has three main affects:
- adds flavour, aromas of vanilla, clove, smoke and coconut
- allows for slow and controlled aging of wine, thogh the wine evaporating and being replaced with oxygen
- provides an environment for Malolactic Fermentation to occur. Malolactic fermentationn is also known as Malo and makes wine taste creamier.
What flavours does oak add?
We're not allowed to add falvour additives, such as grapefruit, melons or nuts; unlike beer. Oak is the accepted way to affect the taste of wine, the oak flavours combine with the wine's flavours to creat a variety of new and different tastes.
Typical oak flavours are:
- almonds, dried fruit
- burn overtones
- woody and coconut
- spices, cloves and smoke aromas
- vanilla
What about new vs old oak?
Oak flavours reduce each time a barrel is used. It's expediential, so in the second year of use you get half the oak flavour, and in the third year of use a quarter of the original amount of oak flavour.
How long a wine spends in barrels depends on the winemaker's vision and plan for that specific wine. For example our Reserve Shiraz is a big, robust fruit driven wine, so it can handel half brand new oak and half one year old oak for 12-18 months. But that would overpower a more delicate wine....our grenache spends about 9 months in older oak barrels, to give it that lovely but very much a background hum of oak.
The larger the oak barrel the less oak flavour and oxygen (aging) goes into the wine. Barriques are traditinally 225 liters, we use Hogsheads 300 Liters, but you can use Foudres, its an oak barrel but at around 20,000 liters it acts more like a stainless steel tank.
French vs American Oak:
French oak is more dense, the rings are closer together, its been suggested this could lead to in lighter oak flavour and lower oxygenation of the wine.
French oak is used for lighter wines, like Chardonnay, wheras American oak is used for bolder wine, such as Cabernetthat can balance American oak's robust flavours and more oxygen ingress.
How much is an Oak Barrel?
An oak tree typically only makes two barrels, trees take a number of decades to grow and coopering the wood into barrels is very skilled.
At the moment the price of a new wine barrel is around $2750.
This adds on about $4 in raw materials to the cost of a single bottle- one of the things that it takes to make great wine!