The timeless tradition of oak maturation is changing

Whether at winery or winery website, the wandering eye of a visitor almost invariably lands on regiments of squat oak barrels. They may be lined up tidily along the curving wall of a cave or stacked high in the low amber light of a cellar, their heads branded with the name of winery, cooper, and forest.

Whether they have wine in them is beside the point. Their proud presence is meant to send a message: We care about the tradition, mystique, and romance of winemaking.

For 2,000 or so years, winemakers have relied on barrels coopered from oak, first for storing and shipping wine, then to take advantage of the happy happenstance discovery that time in barrel enhances a wine’s structure, texture, cohesion, and layering. Now, faced with dynamic shifts in consumer tastes, winemakers are reimagining their exploitation of oak in both form and function. Some are dialing back their use of oak, others are kicking it up to the point that wine can be as suggestive of apple pie as apple.

What’s driving the change

Less than 2% of the world’s wine ever sees the inside of a barrel, according to France’s National Forests Office. French white oak is the gold standard for wine barrels, of which 600,000 are assembled in France annually, a third of the global output. Two-thirds of the French yield is exported, with the United States the single largest customer outside France.

Yet, the customary 59-gallon (223 litre) French barrel long favoured by winemakers is losing cachet beyond the most prestigious and guarded appellations and estates.

For one, it faces intensifying competition for the fermenting and aging of wine from such alternatives as stainless-steel vats, concrete tanks, earthen amphorae, and polyethylene tubs. These options can be cheaper, and they offer novelty, flexibility, and convenience, say winemakers and their suppliers.

What’s more, submerged within many of those alternative containers is oak, albeit in odd forms. Stave-like planks, fan-like paddles, and no end of dominos, marbles, blocks, balls, beans, and, yes, even chips, which when they began to gain popularity among winemakers four decades ago were derided as a cheap shortcut that flew in the face of tradition.

But all are being embraced today as winemakers cope with rising costs, labor challenges, and the desire or need to get wine to market as fast as they can, given that shortcut adjuncts are faster than barrels for enhancing a wine’s complexity, clarity, harmony, structure, texture, aroma, and flavor.

“There are four sides to a chip of oak, not one,” says Anna Marie dos Remedios of Idle Hour Winery in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills.

Stylistic shifts also are affecting oak’s role in winemaking. Winemakers are replacing at least some of their standard barrels with larger oak casks — puncheons, foudres, and the like with capacities up to hundreds of gallons.

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