Would you care for some wood in your wine?

It may not sound appealing, but ‘oaked’ wines are some of the finest in the world – why? Well, when barrels replaced amphorae for transporting wine, people noticed the wine tasted fuller, softer, and gained flavours of culinary spices. They also gained tannic structure and lasted longer.

The principal wood associated with making and ageing wine is oak - oak barrels are watertight due to their close grain, but allow tiny amounts of oxygen to penetrate the wood,  developing the wine as it ages - particularly important for fine wines. Most barrels are French (mainly from 5 specific forests) which typically bring vanilla flavours, and American, which has notes of coconut. The strength of these flavours is determined by how ‘toasted’ the inside of the barrel is when a cooper heats the wooden staves over a fire. 

The wine extracts flavours and tannins from the wood, so eventually the barrels need replacing. Barrels are expensive. Entire forests of ramrod-straight trees are grown to be made into barrels by coopers. These age-old skills  are time-consuming and expensive. Barrels used in premium wine production might only be used 4 times before they need replacing and cost about £500 each! They are re-used for wines requiring more subtle use of oak, and recycling continues until they end up in your garden, cut in half and full of dahlias!

The ultimate wine question is ‘do you like it?’, so whether oaked wine is ‘better’ depends on you! The longer a wine spends in oak, the stronger the flavours, and the more expensive it is (note - simple, fruity wine isn’t always cheaper than oak-aged wine, as many great wines are prized for their pure fruit flavours!), so if you don’t enjoy oaky flavours, that’s great news for your wallet!

Another reason oaked wines are expensive is they normally use premium quality grapes. Oaked wines are more complex with 3 ‘layers’ of flavour, so quality fruit flavours are essential. Primary flavours come from the grapes, secondary from winemaking choices e.g. making it in oak barrels. Tertiary flavours develop during ageing, and though  barrels can be used, many wines develop flavours in bottles too.

There are cheaper ways of adding oak flavours. Oak staves (planks really!) can be added to vats, as can oak ‘chips’ (essentially a giant ‘tea bag’), and even liquid and powder oak flavourings are commercially available. These are useful for people making wine at home or producers of very inexpensive wines. However, any quality oaked wine will be made using barrels because of the degrees of subtlety that can be achieved. As always, there’s only one way to find out what you enjoy, so happy researching!

By Dave Anning