“Oak in wine should be like a ghost. You sense its presence, but don’t actually perceive it.” – Pierre Seillan, vigneron
For most, oak is an integral component of wine. The greatest wines from Napa, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rioja and Piedmont all benefit from oak influence.
While some prefer heavy-handed oak, others prefer a more delicate approach.
French and American oak are most commonly used for wine barrels, along with less common Hungarian oak and Slovenian oak.
American oak grows faster, resulting in a looser grain that is more porous than that of European oak. American oak is sawn, not split like European oak, and is dried in a kiln, as opposed to being seasoned outside for years.
As a result, American oak is more intense and offers more coconut, vanilla and dill notes.
Bold wines from Rioja, Australia, and zinfandels from California can handle the more intense characteristics of American oak.
Conversely, European oak trees grow more slowly, resulting in a tighter grain that generally is more subtle and results in finer tannins.
The wines of Barolo and Barbaresco from Piedmont, Italy, are made with Slovenian barrels, which offer intoxicating notes of sandalwood, along with medium tannins which contribute to long term aging potential.
Toasting, a process that involves lighting a small fire within the wine barrel, also directly influences the finished wine. Levels of toasting vary from light to heavy and are managed by the length and intensity of the fire.
A light toasting has minimal influence and results in milder woody notes and stronger tannins.
Medium toast is suitable for the majority of red wines and brings out the vanilla notes that we all love, along with fewer tannins.
Medium-plus toasting is best suited for fermenting white wines and is responsible for the vanilla and coconut notes.
Heavy toast is intense, resulting in charred, smoky notes and espresso characteristic in bold reds, with the least tannins.
Barrels are expensive, and when wineries use a high percentage of new oak (greater than 50 percent), the prices are reflective.
Wineries that use less new oak often rotate the use of their barrels and refer to them as second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-year used barrels. Because of the cost of new barrels, many wineries have begun to use oak chips, staves, blocks and – in large-production wines – oak dust.
These affordable alternatives drastically reduce the cost of wines, and each product offers different rates of assimilation and integration. A winemaker can flash-oak a wine with oak dust, while chips, blocks and staves have slower integration rates that can produce beautiful wines at a fraction of the cost of new barrels.
New technologies are revolutionizing winemaking techniques with the use of polyethylene tanks that breathe similarly to barrels. Throw in some oak chips, blocks or staves, and you can emulate barrel aging at a fraction of the cost.
Locally, some excellent examples of this technology can be found in the wines from Guy Drew, Wines of the San Juan and Fox Fire Farms.
Alan Cuenca is an accredited oenophile and owner of Put a Cork in It, a Durango wine store. Reach him at info@putacorkinit.org.
