Over a barrel

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/11/2023 (1005 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Between the vineyard and the bottle, there are hundreds of decisions made during the winemaking process that impact the final product that ends up in your glass. Of those decisions, few have as big an impact on a bottle of wine as the type of vessel used for aging before a wine is bottled.

Winemakers looking to preserve maximum freshness in a wine — think lighter white wines, rosés and some reds — stainless steel tanks are usually the way to go. They’re relatively inexpensive, low maintenance, generally impart no flavours and are airtight, meaning there’s little to no contact with oxygen. Wines aged in stainless steel typically stay in there for a short period of time and are crisp and fruit-forward.

Concrete and clay vessels were among the original containers for wine, dating back to the beginnings of what we know as winemaking today. Clay amphorae that held wine have been discovered in Greece dating back to the Bronze Age, while qvevri — large, egg-shaped earthenware vessels — were developed in the country of Georgia, which is thought by many to be one of the birthplaces of wine as we know it.

Clay and earthenware vessels have become fashionable in recent years among wineries looking to preserve freshness in wines without sacrificing complexity. Like stainless steel, these vessels impart little to no flavours in a wine, but the slightly porous and bumpy interior surface changes the way a wine evolves and can soften up wines with higher acidity.

One of the vessels most widely associated with winemaking — particularly the making of red wines — is the wooden barrel. Before the glass bottles that are ubiquitous today, wine was often initially sold in barrels of various sizes. When armies and merchants were traveling abroad by boat, they found barrels to be lighter and less fragile than earth or clay jugs.

A wine that goes into a barrel rarely tasted the same as it did weeks or months later. Unlike steel or concrete tanks, barrels are rarely airtight, meaning the wine would come into contact with oxygen and evolve over time. Plus the barrel itself would impart woody notes as time passed.

Winemakers learned to harness the effects of oak barrels, which these days sit undisturbed in most winery cellars of the world. Part of that learning was discovering that flavours imparted from wood vary based on the type of material used, how old and big the barrel is and how much the inside of the barrel has been toasted or charred by the cooper.

Oak is far and away the most popular type of wood used in the world of wine barrels, the bulk of which comes from either French or American oak trees. French oak tends to impart more spice flavours and is used in wines that offer more complexity, while American oak tends to be more aggressive, bringing more vanilla and coconut notes to the product inside. Hungarian and Slavonian oak are also relatively popular among winemakers in some areas of the world.

Coopers use fire to char the insides of barrels at varying levels of what is called toasting — light, medium or heavy. The heavier the toast, the more intense the flavours of the wood that comes through.

The number of times a barrel has been used also plays a large role in how much flavour is coming from the wood. A new barrel brings bigger, woodier flavours and each successive use of the barrel mellows out those notes until eventually, it’s a neutral vessel.

Then there’s the size of the barrel itself. The most common in the winemaking world is the barrique, a 225-litre barrel. But many wineries (particularly Old World producers) also use larger casks such as puncheons (500 litres), stücks (1,200 litres) or foudres, whose capacity can be in the thousands of litres.

Using larger barrels means there’s less surface of the wine in contact with the wood relative to the volume of the wine in the barrel, which results in less intense woody flavours. These larger oak vessels are often used for many years, meaning they eventually don’t impart woody flavours at all.

Curious about how your wine was aged before bottling? Many bottles tell the story on the back label; failing that, check the winery website.

uncorked@mts.net

@bensigurdson