Wine 101-Oak And Wine Storage

The use of oak in wine plays a significant role in wine making and can really have a strong effect on the resulting wine, impacting the color, flavor, tannin profile and texture of the wine.  When you use
oak, you can really have varying flavors and can truly impact all the components listed above.

It can be introduced to the wine in the form of free floating oak chips or as wood staves (or sticks) added to wine in a fermentation vessel like stainless steel. This can allow you to change the flavor and the texture of the wine.  You can adjust the wine more when you know as much about this process as possible.

When oak is introduced in the form of a wine barrel it can impart other qualities to the wine through the process of evaporation and low level exposure to oxygen.  This is what allows the entire process to be so successful when it comes to the flavor of the wine.

Many winemakers choose to ferment their wine in oak as oak barrels tend to soften the wine and this allows the flavor to be more suitable to the desires of the winemaker.

Some other differences to note are that American oak tends to be more intensely flavored then French oak with more sweet and vanilla overtones due to the American oak having two to four times as many lactones.  This is a difference that is often overlooked by winemaker, but really should be taken as a serious way to adjust the texture and flavor of wine.

The majority of oak flavoring is imparted in the first few months that the wine is in contact with oak but a longer term exposure can affect the wine.  So, if you want to change the flavor as much as possible, the longer you let it set the more it will change over time.

California Chardonnays are often aged in toasted oak for a long period of time, which imparts the intense vanilla flavor that many have grown to love.  This is a favorite wine of many folks because of its great flavor, but it is a very long process to get wine to taste so flavorful.

But the fruit flavor drops off almost as soon as the wine is swallowed, a problem which many call “overoaking” a wine.  So, you want to be certain that you know what you are doing when you attempt to use oak in adjusting the flavor or your wine to get the optimum taste from it.