Oak Barrels vs Oak Chips

A batch of red wine was divided into 4 lots. One aged in French oak barrel, one aged in American Oak barrel, one on French oak chips in SS steel and one on American oak chips in SS steel. A good sized group of red wine drinkers tasted all the wines. Statistically, they were the same. Here is a link:
http://www.academicwino.com/2011/06/oak-barrels-vs-oak-chips-showdown.html

Howie, Hi....


A seriously faulted study because it fails to (a) state how long after bottling the wines were tasted and (b) fails to follow up on the same wines three, six, nine and more months after bottling.

I am not opposed to the use of oak chips in wines that are intended for relatively youthful drinking but have found in a great many follow-up tastings that oak-chipped wines will only very, very rarely continue to develop in the bottle and tend to pass their peak far, far earlier than those that have been aged in a combination of barrels and stainless steel. More than that, as with the use of oak in general, much depends on the winemaker's decisions as to precisely what chips to use. And, of course, let us not forget the possibility of using oak staves.

Best
Rogov

I have problems with this because I know how much wine treated exactly the same can taste. I racked 3 carboys of my wine last weekend and as always tasted them all before racking and had my wife do the same. She asked me what they were and when I told her, her response was "what are the other two?" They tasted so distinct that she thought they were different wines.

Once you change even one element, the potential for greater differences is increased. Now throw in 65 different tasters with unknown taste preferences and try to tell me that the final result is statistically there is no difference does not translate into real life for me.

I am unclear of the difference between adding oak chips to fermenting wine (which is allowed) and adding other flavourants (which is not allowed by most authorities.)

I was astonished to hear in Bordeaux last week that it is now legal to use oak chips & staves in Bordeaux... I realise that it levels the playing field with the new world, but all the same I was disappointed and saddened.

The study is also flawed because we do not know about the wood used in the barrels/chips: There was an interesting study done by Drouhin concerning barrels made from wood cut either from a tree that grew in a large stand of trees or a tree that grew somewhat isolated from other trees. The distinction is that the tree-near-other-trees had to compete for sun and rain and its rings were tighter than those of the tree-that-grew-alone. The tighter grain transferred less oak flavor into the wine, holding all other things equal (cooperage and elevage).

...The distinction is that the tree-near-other-trees had to compete for sun and rain and its rings were tighter than those of the tree-that-grew-alone. The tighter grain transferred less oak flavor into the wine, holding all other things equal (cooperage and elevage).

Most American oak barrels were developed for aging whiskey and thus use white oak from the Southern US, such as Tennessee and Arkansas. However, coopers are now using white oak from Northern areas, such as NY, MI and Canada for wine barrels as they have a much tighter grain.

For the most part I think this study was very basic. It didn’t ask the participants to identify which wine had which/ or what oak treatment. All it did basically was ask the participants to give a personal preference. Rank the wines in the order you like them. Like Daniel, I would hope the organizers gave the bulk aged oak barreled wine adequate time to assimilate and settle-down in the bottle.
What I find pretty interesting is that most of the participants said that they will not buy a wine knowing oak chips were used.

Salute

Just because the study could have included more factors does not make it flawed. The study used typical drinkers of a particular local style of wine, and I am guessing it was tasted when it woudl normally be drunk. Under that set of circumstances, they discovered that the drinkers had no preferences for the wines made in the different ways. That sounds like a clear and useful study to me, and if I were a winemaker in the region the message would be loud and clear - don't use expensive barrels, but be discrete about it!

I suspect the conclusions can be generalised to other wines and other groups of drinkers, but of course this study does not prove it.

I wanted to follow up on Peter's comment about the use of staves/chips in Bordeaux. I'd always thought that the use of staves and chips were still forbidden in Europe, but that the EU was planning to change the regulations at some point in order to improve the European wine-makers ability to compete with the New World. So Peter's comment confused me. After searching on the Net, it appears that the EU changed the rules way back in 2006 in order to allow the use of chips (where have I been?!?!?!) but that France's INAO then outlawed their use for French wine. However, then it seems that the INAO didn't follow through completely on the French legislation, so that there is indeed a gap for French wine-makers to use chips (such as what Peter saw in Bordeaux). It's all very confusing and the Internet is rather untrustworthy and/or incomplete when it comes to really being able to understand a subject...does anyone know what the story is with the use of wood chips in Europe? Is is allowed throughout Europe? And is it allowed for all quality levels, or only for the lower quality levels (for example, allowed for Vins de Pays but not for AOC)? And how prevalent has the use of wood chips become?
Thanks for any insight you can provide! cheers, Bonnie

Hi Bonnie in Holland,
I believe that the EU as a whole allows the use of oak chips and alternatives in wine production, but the “local” wine authorities (who govern how the wines are labeled) of a given wine region will have “final-say”.
Will oak chips and alternatives replace oak barrels? IMHO I don’t think so. Yes, with micro-oxygenation we are getting close to duplicating what occurs in an oak barrel. But in the end, I don’t believe we can duplicate exactly what occurs naturally, at its own natural pace, between the wine and the oak barrel.

Salute

...The distinction is that the tree-near-other-trees had to compete for sun and rain and its rings were tighter than those of the tree-that-grew-alone. The tighter grain transferred less oak flavor into the wine, holding all other things equal (cooperage and elevage).

Most American oak barrels were developed for aging whiskey and thus use white oak from the Southern US, such as Tennessee and Arkansas. However, coopers are now using white oak from Northern areas, such as NY, MI and Canada for wine barrels as they have a much tighter grain.

Not only is the above true, but there were (are?) substantial differences in how the oak is dried (air vs. kiln + lenght of drying) and construction (how the staves are bent). There is some work that claims the difference between American and European oak is lessened when the wood is air dried for an extended period (several years), as is the practice at the better French coopers.

This seems to be a pretty authoritative source on the history of the legality of oak chips in the EU
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... IJG561.DTL
I was a bit surprised that they were ever banned at the EU level in a blanket way.

I find it difficult to understand why a combination of staves and micro-oxygenation could not replicate the conditions in barrels. Difficult maybe to replicate the condition in a particular barrel, but I would imagine it would also not be straightforward for another maker to make another barrel that woud have an identical effect. Using chips might well be more difficult, but there a lot of variables that could be manipulated in their use.

What I find even more difficult to accept is that "natural" barrels necessarily give the optimum result (whatever that means). What is so natural about a barrel? Particularly when you start messing with it by applying different levels of toast! It is an mere accident of history that they were used for maturing wines and some felt the resulting flavours/aromas were desirable.