oaked wines a guide
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007It’s one of the peculiarities of the wine trade that most of the wine world’s finest and rarest wines spend time in oak before they are released onto market. Why oak after all? There are other woods available, and isn’t using wood of any description rather an antiquated approach in today’s modern wine industry? Oak has a lengthy history in winemaking, and was particularly important before the widespread introduction of stainless steel in wineries in the latter half of the 20th century. It was (and still is) used as a fermenting, maturation, and storage vessel in winemaking. Oak adds attractive aroma and character to certain wines. It is also favoured over other woods as it is pliable (comparably at any rate), and has low porosity. Other woods have historically been used in winemaking (perhaps chestnut in the Rhone and pine resin in the Greek resinated wine retsina being the two other best known examples), but none have the same benefits. Oak barrel fermentation specifically is mostly practiced for white wine making (as it’s very difficult to extract the skins and other solid mass after red wine fermentation). The process is beleived to provide more integrated oak flavours into the wine. Not all grape varieties and wine styles have a natural affinity with oak. Riesling in particular is a noble grape variety that fares better without the oak influence. Chardonnay and oak however, have long been known to be a match made in heaven, and the world’s most expensive dry white wines (from Burgundy) are built on this very partnership. Now here is the thing about oak. popping your wine in oak barrels is not an inexpensive activity, particularly if the oak is new and from France. So what is a humble winemaker to do? Since the early 1960’s there has been a number of other options. Today for example, If you don’t fancy spending money on barrels, in corresponding rising of cost, you can filter oak dust through your wine, or use oak chips, or opt for oak staves. These methods have been particularly popular with New World wine producers. Shocked? If you are a regular wine drinker, you have almost certainly drunk wine produced in this way (unless of course you’ve never spent less than

