Victorwine wrote:As far as oak barrels “subtracting from the wine” I would say no; “altering” and “chemically changing a wine” I would say yes (this is not necessarily “subtraction”); “masking” I would say maybe; (if Hoke don’t mind (sorry Hoke I’m going to use it anyway) I’ll borrow something he said earlier) “obstructive” most definitely if the oak influence is over-done.
Note that sometimes adding a flavour will make another one appear stronger. I mentioned an example (sugar and an almond aroma) on my blog recently. Will, OK, it is the ONLY example I know of, but there must be others. If you are interested, take a look and you can drill down through the links/references to find the original research:
http://www.winenous.co.uk/wp/archives/1006