The Kiss of Oak

To make a wine with a pure, clean fruit character the winemaker can nowadays use temperature-controlled, hygienic stainless steel vats.  But if all you drank were pure, clean fruit- driven wines you’d soon get pretty bored.  That’s why almost all red wines and about half of all white wines are still made with the influence of oak, because oak interacts with and adds a layer of complexity to the fruit.  Oak can be introduced in the following ways:

• Large oak vats.  Although oak barrels are water-tight they are not air-tight, so a minute amount of oxygen seeps in during maturation, softening and rounding the wine.  The risk with these traditional oak vats is that they can’t be properly cleaned between vintages so spoilage bugs can develop.

• Stainless steel vats with oak chips or staves.  Traditional small oak barrels add between £1.50 and £7 to the price of a bottle of wine, so to make wine priced below about £7 the winemaker will use oak chips or staves placed inside large stainless steel vats.  Whilst this is a neat technical solution the oak taste in these wines often lacks integration and can seem harsh and obvious.

• Oak barrels.  Most fine wines are made using small oak barrels.  Barrels impart both structure through oxygen and their own oak flavours into the wine.  These flavours depend on the type of oak and the level of toasting: the cooper’s art is an amazingly complex subject that can make or break a great wine.

This table provides a very rough guide to how different wines are matured and the tastes that result.  As always with wine there are many delicious exceptions to the rule:

Amount of toasting a barrel receives; (L) Light, (M) Medium, (M+) Medium Plus, (H) Heavy

Rob Malcolm