If you have ever visited a winery here in Argentina, or anywhere in the world for that matter you’ve most likely seen large oak barrels filled with aging wine. While winemaking technologies have changed quite a bit in recent decades, something that has remained constant for thousands of years is aging wine in oak barrels. Oak aging is a very complicated topic, and even highly trained winemakers that taste thousands of wines per year do not fully understand the chemical reactions that take place when wine is put in oak barrels, adding to the mysterious art of making wine.
Aging wine in oak barrels has several benefits for making a great wine. Unlike modern stainless steel barrels, the tiny pores in oak allow small amounts of oxygen to come into contact with the wine, which allows the wine to oxygenate, but not enough to spoil. Because of the pores, a small amount of wine (about 5.5-6 gallons/year), mostly just water and alcohol, evaporate from the barrel allowing more concentrated flavors and aromas. Additionally, when the oak and wine come into contact, complicated chemical reactions take place. Phenols in the wood interact with the wine and create the distinct flavors identified with oak aging, such as vanilla, tobacco, smoke, caramel, and mocha. Most of these characteristics are passed in the first few months the wine is inside the barrel, but extended time inside oak barrels slowly aerates the wine and speeds up the aging process.
While many varieties of oak have been experimented with, American and French Oak barrels have been shown to be the best for aging wine in. American oak creates a more intense oak flavor in the wine. Its most dominant descriptor is vanilla. American oak works best with intense and flavorful red wines. French Oak is subtler. Flavors identified with French oak are spice, toasted almonds, and sweet notes.
In recent years winemakers have experimented with other forms of oak aging such as putting oak chips, oak planks, and even oak powder in the fermenting and aging wine. Purists say that these methods do not give the wine as complex a flavor as aging wine in oak barrels, but because oak barrels are so expensive ($300-600 per barrel) wineries are continuing to research new methods that can give wine the desirable qualities of true oak barrel aging at a lower cost and quicker.
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