The Truth About Oak Barrels: How They Really Shape Your Wine

Ep 133

What if one of wine’s most recognizable symbols, the oak barrel, was never meant to be used for aging wine at all?

In this episode, we’re diving into the history and science of oak in winemaking. From the Roman Empire’s accidental discovery of oak barrels to how modern winemakers use them intentionally today, you’ll learn why oak has become one of the most powerful tools for shaping a wine’s flavor, texture, and aroma.

We’ll break down what really happens inside the barrel, from how oxygen softens tannins to the compounds that add notes of vanilla, spice, and caramel. You’ll also discover the truth behind that “buttery” flavor in Chardonnay and why it’s not actually coming from the oak itself.

Finally, we’ll explore the different types of oak used around the world, what makes French, American, and Hungarian barrels unique, and the rise of sustainable alternatives like oak chips and staves. 

If you’ve ever wondered how oak barrels influence what’s in your glass or what winemakers mean when they say a wine was “oaked”, this episode is for you!

Thank you to the following brands for sponsoring this podcast:

• Vacu Vin: Go to us.vacuvin.com and use code CORKANDFIZZ for 20% off your order!
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• Wine Wash Co: Go to winewashco.com and use code CORK for 20% off your order, plus free U.S. shipping on orders over $35!

Episode Highlights:

• How oak barrels were first used by the Romans
  
  
• The key reasons winemakers choose oak today: flavor, texture, and fermentation environment
  
  
• The truth about “buttery” wines and malolactic fermentation
  
  
• The process of crafting an oak barrel, from staves to toasting
  
  
• Differences between French, American, and Hungarian oak
  
  
• Cost and sustainability factors in oak barrel use
  
  
• Why new vs. old oak matters for flavor
  
  
• Oak alternatives: chips, cubes, and staves
  
  
• The meaning of “the angel’s share” in winemaking
  
  
• How winemakers balance tradition with innovation

Transcript

0:09

Interested in learning about wine, but not sure where to start. You're in the right place. Welcome to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. I'm your host, Hayley Bowlman, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm a wine enthusiast turned wine educator and founder of the Seattle based wine tasting business, Corporate Cork and Fizz. It is my goal to build your confidence in wine by making it approachable and lots of fun. You can expect to learn everything from how to describe your favorite wine to what to pair with dinner tonight, and so much more. Whether you're a casual wine sipper or a total cork dork like myself, this podcast is for you. So grab yourself a glass and let's dive in foreign. Hello and welcome back to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. So happy to have you here. Today we're going to be talking about oak barrels and, well, we're going to go beyond oak barrels as well, but we're going to be talking about the influence of oak on wine. I feel like oak barrels are often associated with wine, especially for an aesthetic, but also as a thing we think about of like what is part of the winemaking process. But the thing is that oak barrels nowadays are actually a choice that winemakers can make. And so understanding why a winemaker might choose to use an oak barrel I thought would be fun to talk about. And of course, you know me, we gotta talk about history when we're talking anything related to wine. So I also thought it'd be fun to go back and talk about where the idea of even using oak with respect to wine came from. So let's dive in. So similar to many things in wine, the use of oak barrels was more of a happy accident rather than an intentional choice. It came from the need to make transporting of wine easier during the time of the Roman Empire. You see, wine during that time was much safer to drink than water. So they took it everywhere with them. And for the longest time, Romans used clay amphora. These are those large clay pots to transport their wine. And this was the same as the Egyptians and the Greeks before them. But as they started to push north into Europe and away from the Mediterranean, transporting the clay amphora became more difficult. And that's when they came across the Gauls who were using wooden barrels, often made of oak, to transport beer and other things. They were inspired by this and started using oak barrels to transport their wine. Now, before they saw these oak barrels, there were actually some people who were using palm wood, palm tree wood, to make Barrels. But that type of wood was too hard and it was difficult to bend into barrels. The oak, though, was soft enough, and so they could bend that into barrels. And there was also an abundance of. Of oak forests in continental Europe. So this was a perfect, perfect situation for them. The barrels themselves were also easier to transport than the amphora because of the shape of the barrel. It actually allowed one single person to roll it and turn it in any direction with very little effort, despite the fact that a full, what we think of as a regular sized barrel of wine could weigh nearly 600 pounds. But again, because of the shape of it, they could roll it and turn it, and just a single person could do that. Now, over time, Romans and other societies after them quickly realized that the oak was imparting pleasant qualities to the wine. It wasn't just beneficial for transporting. They're like, hey, oh, this stuff tastes better. It made the wine softer. And we'll talk about why that is. And oftentimes just made it taste better. It gave it other flavors. So beyond transporting the wine, they began aging the wine in the oak barrels as well, because they realized the longer it was in the oak barrel, the better the wine got. So now let's talk about. So that's kind of how oak barrels came to be about and why we started using them more. And now, of course, you know, at the time, that was kind of their only option for transporting. And then it kind of became the only option for how wine was fermented and aged. It was all done in an oak barrel. Now, of course, we have tanks, you know, stainless steel tanks, we have concrete tanks as well, and many other options. So now, again, it's kind of going back to the like. Okay, so now, now that we have options, why would we choose to use an oak barrel? That's what we're going to go into next. So I often find, and I want to kind of give this as like, a caveat before we dive into this section. A lot of times when people think of an oaked wine, they often think of like, a white wine and specifically Chardonnay, but they specifically think of like, oh, a white wine that was oaked, but it's actually more common. And it's actually oak barrels are used more often with red wines, believe it or not. Now, they don't impart as strong of flavors, which I think is why we don't always associate it. But most red wines are put in an oak barrel for some amount of time versus a much smaller percentage of white wine. So just a fun fact, to think about while we go through this. Now, there are three key reasons that a winemaker might choose to use oak for either fermenting or aging their wine. The first reason is that it can add flavor in the form of aroma compounds. Remember, most flavor in wine actually comes from our noses, right? Our taste buds can only taste so many different things, like sweet, sour, bitter. You know, there's. There's three more there. Salty, right? But our noses can distinguish so many different smells. And so the oak barrels actually impart flavor by producing aroma compounds that we can then smell with our nose. So the most common of which are oak lactones that are in the oak barrels. And these will produce a smell of coconut. There is also vanillin, which sounds like what it is. It is the aroma of vanilla. The next ones are going to be super scientific in terms of their names, and I'm probably not saying them right, so don't worry about that. I just thought it'd be fun to say anyway, but I'll let you know what, like, the actual smell is. So oak barrels can also produce aromatic compounds called eugeniol or isogenial, and these produce spice and clove notes. They can also produce furfural and 5 methyl furfrol, which is caramel and sweet aromas. And then finally gyqual and four methylgyquol. And this produces a charred and smoky aroma. I'll go into a few other details on aromas when we get into the different types of oak, because, believe it or not, different types of oak actually produce different aromas. But these are the ones that are kind of common across the board. So one reason, and a winemaker might choose to put their wine in an oak barrel, is that it imparts flavor. Another reason is to make the wine smoother. And this is why red wines tend to go in oak barrels. So the thing is, wine doesn't leak from an oak barrel. Like, it's not that. It's, like, not, like, sealed tight. But the barrel isn't sealed off from oxygen entirely. The grains in the oak barrel actually allow the slow ingress of oxygen into the barrel, which is different from, like, a steel or concrete tank. And allowing that little bit of oxygen in just a little bit at a time causes the wine to taste smoother and less astringent. And proof of this, of the oxygen being able to get into the barrel, is what in the wine world, they often call the angels share. And what this is, is if you put wine in an oak barrel to age for a certain amount of time, you'll Notice that the winemaker actually goes into the cellar and tops off the barrels every once in a while. And that's because the oxygen that's getting into the barrel causes that wine to evaporate. And they call the wine that evaporates off the top the angels share. And then they don't want that much oxygen in contact with the wine, like the whole top of it, and they don't want it to keep going down. So they'll actually keep adding wine to the top of the barrel to prevent there from being too much space in the barrel for oxygen. And so they call that the angel share. And so it's actually just proof that, yes, there is oxygen getting in. Not a lot, not enough to ruin our wine. It's just enough to often smooth out especially the tannins in the wine. And like I said, in red winemaking, that impact of the oxygen is crucial. The color and the tannin of the grape skins need oxygen to form those kind of stable phenolic compounds. And those phenolic compounds are what give us the tannin taste in our mouth. But if they don't form stable compounds that either fall out of the wine, so we lose the tannin, or they're too intense and they're not well structured in the wine. Along with helping the wine tannins, the oak itself actually imparts its own tannins as well as both into red and white wine. But again, we notice this more in a red wine. It helps structure the wine, and you're able to keep wine aging longer in the bottle when it has gone through this kind of slow oxygen process. The last reason that a winemaker will choose to use an oak barrel for their wine is that it's a suitable environment for what's called malolactic fermentation. So the first type of fermentation that a wine goes through is to convert the sugars into alcohol. But the winemakers have an option to take a second fermentation on the wine or to allow the wine to go through a second fermentation, I should say. And this is where it. It's what it sounds like. So malolactic stands for the malic acid. It's really tart. Think of like a green apple, which is natural in the grapes themselves. So it starts in the wine. So once we go through the regular fermentation, they'll still have malic acid in it. And so malolactic fermentation converts that malic acid into lactic acid, which is a creamier type of acid. And it really makes the Wine taste creamier and softer. And so the oak barrels provide a suitable environment for this. Now, this is where it gets a little confusing because I think a lot of people associate, especially when talking about white wines, a buttery taste for from oaked white wines. And here's the thing, oak itself, the oak barrel is not imparting that flavor. Instead, the oak barrel is providing an environment that allows for malolactic fermentation to happen in the malolactic fermentation is where we can get that buttery popcorn type flavor. Not every time white wine goes in an oak barrel does it go through malolactic fermentation. A winemaker can control that. And so don't associate oak barrel like oak aging in a white wine, meaning it's going to be buttery and popcorny. That is not the thing. That is not one of the aromas that oak barrels give to the wine. That is instead what comes from malolactic fermentation, which often happens because of being in an oak barrel. But it isn't always going to happen when a wine is in an oak barrel. Hopefully that makes sense. And again, interestingly enough, this malolactic fermentation process happens more often with red wines than white. We just don't notice it because it's not as strong. It doesn't impart that like butter popcorn flavor on red wine. Instead, it kind of just makes it a smoother, softer wine. I also want to note here, as we're talking about having wine in oak barrels, there is a difference between fermenting a wine in an oak barrel and then fermenting and maturing or aging that wine in an oak barrel. So fermenting is that process when the sugars in the grape juice are converted into alcohol. And this process can happen in an oak barrel, but it can also happen in a tank. And it more often happens in a tank just because it's. It's easier to control the temperature. Temperature is really important during fermentation. We don't want it to get too hot, but it's also cheaper that way. And so a lot of times wine is just matured or aged in an oak barrel. Now, the problem though is if you only mature or age the wine in an oak barrel and not ferment it, and you do it for just a short blast of time, it can make it, the oak flavors feel kind of bolted on and not integrated. So this is obviously a choice that the winemaker needs to make. And of course, you can definitely mature an age wine in an oak barrel and have it fermented in a tank, it's totally fine. The winemaker just needs to be aware of those choices. Okay, so we've talked about why we would use oak barrels. I also thought it'd be fun, and I was kind of curious of, like, what are all the steps to make an oak barrel? Because the. The oak itself. And once you decide that you want to use. So if you're a winemaker and you're deciding, okay, now I do want to use oak barrels for my wine, the next question becomes, what type of oak barrel do you want to use? Because there are lots of options. And so before we go into the different types of oak barrels, both with, like, the type of wood, the size, how new it is, all of that good stuff, I thought it'd be good just to get, like, a little background on, like, what are the basics of how a oak barrel is made. And I do have a goal on the podcast to get a Cooper, which is what they're called, the people who make oak barrels, to come on the show and talk a little bit more in detail about making oak barrels. But in the meantime, you're gonna get my short little oak barrels for Dummies version where I just. I kind of just like, go into the. The basics of how an oak barrel is made at a cooperage by a Cooper. I just think those are such fun words. I love producing this podcast for you every week, but here's the truth. It's not free. That's why I'm so grateful for sponsors, like the following brands supporting me so that' that I can share everything I love about wine with you. If you're able, show them some support back. Thank you to Vocill for sponsoring this episode. Nothing ruins the perfect afternoon out on the sunny patio like a glass of warm wine and ice might seem like the only option, but it just waters down your wine. That's where Vochil comes in. Vochil is one of my favorite wine gadgets. It keeps your wine perfectly chilled in your own glass. No clunky metal tumblers, no ice cubes, just beautifully chilled wine, sip after sip. I don't drink wine in the summer without mine, and I've gotten all of my family and friends hooked as well. My mom used hers so much last year that one of her friends ended up getting one of her own as a Christmas gift. 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Go to us.vacuvin.com and use code corkandfizz for 20% off your first order. This episode is sponsored by Wine Wash Company, the brand that makes fun, functional gifts designed by a wine lover for wine lovers. I'm constantly using their silicone clips to keep my wine glasses safe in the dishwasher and I can't get enough of their wine themed sponges with sayings like let it merlot and I like big pores and I cannot lie Wine Washco products are great for stocking stuffers, unique gifts or a little treat for yourself any time of year. Get 20% off your order@WinewashCo.com with code CORK at checkout plus free us Shipp on orders over$35. Okay, so first you have oak trees, right? And so there are staves that are cut to the correct length, width and thickness to make barrels. And those are basically like, they kind of look like the planks in the oak barrels that like the, the long thin. I'm like you doing hand actions right now and you clearly can't see them because this is a podcast. But just think of them as kind of like the planks that then will end up being like put together to make the barrel. That is what a stave is. And so it's interesting and we're going to talk about the different types of oak. But American oak can actually be cut into staves to make the barrels versus French oak has a tighter grain and so it needs to be split. Now after those staves are cut, they are air dried and seasoned. And what that means they don't just like Go out there with like, I, for some reason, like when I saw Seasoned, I was like picturing them going out there with like a shaker of cinnamon or something and like spicing the, the wood. That is not what they do. Instead, those staves are left outside and they, they are exposed to the elements for a certain amount of time. And so the elements season the, the wood. And this is usually. They're usually left outside for anywhere between two to five years. Generally, the higher quality the barrel they're going to make, the longer they're going to leave it out there. The reason they do this is because wood shrinks as, as it dries. And you can't make barrels that are structurally sound using wood with a moisture content above 15%. So they need to leave them outside to both dry. And then the seasoning does and can affect the flavor of the wine that is then put into that barrel. Next, all those staves that have been air dried and seasoned, they are delivered to the cooperage and they are cut again. Each individual stave needs to be cut so that the middle of each one is slightly wider than its ends. And this is so that they can all then be positioned in a hoop. And this hoop is like that metal ring that you see on the outside of a barrel. And once they are all put in the hoop, it is hammered firmly into place. Next comes the more dramatic, probably the most dramatic of the coopering process or the most dramatic step, and that is bending, which in French they call mise en roll. And each barrel is warmed for about 25 minutes, so they can make those straight staves, the like little plank, like things pliable enough to bend into the barrel's characteristic kind of more ovoid shape. And then they place another hoop on the end of that and, well, I guess they don't put the other hoop on yet. Typically they bend it and then it is taken over to, so it's heated in order to bend. And then they are actually taken to be toasted after that. And this toasting is done. It's not just like to put over a fire and call done. It's actually a very slow and patient firing. And this is where like the most experienced coopers tend to spend their time because they have to keep this fire at a very specific temperature. And the amount of toasting that's done and it's done on the inside of the barrel will affect the flavor of the wine. Higher toast levels. An American oak can amplify butterscotch notes, and they can increase smokiness in the French oak. Both of those are for white wines and then for reds. And it imparts mocha or espresso flavors in red wines. And so it just kind of depends on what type of wine is the barrel going to be used for, you know, and what flavors do they want. And then that decides how much toasting happens on the inside of the barrel. And then, like I said, they put the second metal ring on and then do all the other little things to finish up the barrel. Okay, now that we have an idea of, like, how barrels are made, let's talk about different types of barrels. So the first thing to talk about is the type of oak that is used to make the barrel. You may have heard French oak versus American oak, and I'm actually going to introduce a third one as well. But let's talk about French oak first. So French oak is super common throughout Europe. It typically refers to the tree that has the scientific name Circus Robur. I don't speak Latin, so that does not sound probably right, but it typically refers to that. So Circus Robert. But there's also another type of oak that they use in France called Cecile oak, which is Kirkus patre, and that one's a little finer grained and it's a little more sparse. The French oak is more common. The Kirkus Robert is more common throughout Europe. In general, these are just a more fine grained, consistent wood compared to the American oak that we'll talk about in a second. And it tends to add flavor compounds like the ones we mentioned before. And it does this, though in a more subtle way than the other main types of oak, which is why this is so sought out. Like that is like to be able to put some flavor, but not a lot into the wine, is what most winemakers are looking for. Now, the thing is a French oak, it is very sought out. And the cost has just increased significantly for a French oak barrel. The cost of a single barrel, like, if you think about our, the regular barrels that winemakers use could be anywhere between 850 to$3,600 at a minimum per barrel. They can go for higher than that even, which is kind of insane. On the flip side of French oak, you have American oak, and this is a species. The one that's used most frequently for wine is the American white O, which is Kirchis alba. And this grows throughout the eastern US and is commonly found in Missouri. What's interesting is that a lot of American oak barrels are actually made for the bourbon industry, and that's because bourbon is actually required to age in new oak for one year by law. And it's used so much that there's actually, oh, gosh, I'm forgetting the name of it. But the very, the very famous bourbon company McAllen, something Scottish, actually owns a forest in America because they use so many American oak barrels. Now, American oak can also be used for wine. It's most commonly used for wine, actually, in Rioja, Spain, and of course, throughout the U.S. one of the things about American oak, it imparts a lot of flavor compared to our French oak, and it imparts a lot of unique flavor, including dill and then additional coconut and vanilla. They tend to have looser grains than both the French and the Eastern European oak, which we're going to talk about in a second. And of course, the nicest thing about American oak is that it costs a heck of a lot less than French oak. At a minimum, they're usually about$360 to $500 a barrel. Now, as I said, I'm gonna mention a third type. So I think most people think of oak barrels as either French or American oak, but there's actually another type of oak that's becoming more and more popular, and that is Hungarian or Eastern European oak. And this type of oak is actually comes from the same oak tree as French oak that Kirkus Robert. And it's a popular choice because it's similar, like, remarkably similar to French oak. I mean, it comes from the same gosh darn tree, but it costs less. And despite being from the same oak tree, apparently many winemakers believe that the Hungarian oak imparts a richer, nutty flavor for the finished wine. So that's why they might still stick with French. But the Hungarian can be used well, and they actually use it on a lot of, like, full bodied reds for that reason. It is commonly considered the midway point between American and French oak. When we're thinking about how grainy it is and the cost wise, again, it's also between American and French with being a minimum of about 560 to$700 a barrel. Now, beyond these three types of oak, French oak, American oak, and then the Hungarian Eastern European oak, there are actually other woods that folks are experimenting with for their barrels. Instead of an oak barrel, you would have to call it something else. And so, for example, there is chestnut. So a chestnut barrel, this barrel offers more oxygen ingress, so it allows more oxygen to come in. Doesn't have the oak lactone, which causes the coconut flavor, but does increase the glycol, which was the kind of smoky flavor along with The Vanillin, which was the vanilla flavor. You could also have an acacia, acacia barrel. And so again here there is a possible increased oxygen ingress, some more oxygen contact, and no oak lactone, so none of the coconut. There's also Iberian oak. This can offer more oxygen. Again, so they're going to be looser grained and increases the vanilla tones. And there is English oak, which is similar to one of the French oaks, the Cecile oak, which is not as prevalent in France, but is prevalent in other areas. So this could potentially be used. Now, besides choosing what type of oak you want to use for your oak barrel, you also need to think about do you want new or old oak? So we've been talking about one of the reasons to choose using an oak barrel in general is to impart flavor. But the thing is, only new oak imparts flavor. It imparts both flavor and that texture of smoothing things out versus an older oak barrel imparts just the texture that smoothing out. Now the question is, how old is old, right? What are we talking about here? And it is not that old, not at all. After the first two to three uses, an oak barrel stops flavoring a wine. And then it is called a neutral oak barrel. And this is an older oak barrel. So believe it or not, old is two to three years old. And after that though, they can be used for a really long time. They can use upwards of a hundred years if they want, but it will not impart the flavor anymore. It needs to be under the two to three years old in order to do that. The neutral oak, though, what it does is it allows that small oxygen exchange to happen. And so it'll still help smooth out the texture. And some winemakers say that it does actually help kind of focus on non fruit flavors in the wine as well. And so we have the type of oak barrel, the type of oak you use to make your barrel, we have whether it's a new versus an old oak barrel. And then you have to choose the size of your oak barrel. The smaller the barrel, the stronger the oak influence. And this is just because more of the wine is in contact with the oak. Your typical size, your 225 liter Barique, will have more impact on the wine than like let's say a 500 liter puncheon, or they can get even bigger than that. And this is due to a higher percentage of the wine again being in contact with the wood. And you can actually use a smaller barrel than the typical size that we think of in our heads. And again, that will just impart Even more or have even more of an impact on the wine. The last thing I wanted to talk about is alternatives to barrels. So the thing is, it is expensive to use new oak especially. So if you want to impart flavor, the oak flavor on your wine, it is really expensive to use new oak for every wine in every vintage. And it's also wasteful. Oak trees will only make enough wood for about two barrels, which each of those barrels holds about 50 cases or 600 bottles of wine. And so if you're thinking you're using new oak and it has to be one to two years old, I mean, the winemakers are buying new oak barrels every year or every other year, and they're using up a lot of trees. And the thing is, when you're making the oak barrels, you typically want to use oak trees that are at least a hundred years old. So while, yes, trees are a renewable resource, they're not that renewable, right? So as the oak forests are being strained, as demand for wine worldwide increases, and especially the demand for oaked wine, so income, the alternative option. So rather than putting wine in oak, you could put oak in wine. So the examples of this would be like putting oak chips, oak cubes, or even oak staves directly into wine that is in a tank. And this is generally referred to on the bottle. You know, if you see a description as oak maturation or oak influence rather than barrel age, those can sometimes be hints that they did this kind of shortcut, you might say, or this alternative. So there are pros and cons. I feel like at first, when I first thought about this and when I first went into this podcast, even just like, doing the, the research for it, I was just thinking of all the negative, negative reasons to not want to do this, but there are actually a lot of pros and a lot of reasons to do this kind of shortcut or this alternative. First of all, it is way cheaper because they can use more of a single oak tree. It's also more efficient to ship. Right. Rather than shipping these massive oak barrels, you can ship the oak cubes or the oak chips. They have a smaller carbon footprint, and it avoids the, the problem of unused surface area that oak barrels have. The entire outside of the oak barrel never touches the wine. And interestingly enough, I have actually heard of a winery that has their own cooperage where they actually flip the wine barrels inside out after they've used them to try to, like, help with this as well. So there are other options too, besides oak chips. But it is a really interesting, interesting thing to think about is that a lot of oak barrels, that new newness, it stays around on the outside because it's never in contact with the wine. Of course there are cons to doing these alternatives in these shortcuts. Many will claim that the wine made with oak barrel alternatives don't have the complexity of a wine that is matured in a barrel and they won't age as well. So of course it is a choice to be made. Alright, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Pocket podcast and learned a little bit more about oak barrels and now feel a little more educated when it comes to learning about an oaked wine. If you love this episode as much as I did, I would so appreciate it if you could take a quick second rate it. Leave a review and if you know a wine lover in your life that would enjoy this, please share it with them. In next week's episode, I'll be interviewing Canadian winemakers Katie and Ben of 1 Mill Road. They are advocates for Canadian wine to get world worldwide recognition, as I certainly feel it should, and of course have a lot to share about the wine that they are making in the region. In Canada, they are making wine. Thanks again for listening and if you want to learn more about wine, come follow me at Cork and Fizz on Instagram. Cheers.