Temperature plays a crucial role in shaping wine style both before and during fermentation, but overall climatic conditions become an additional key consideration when wines undergo barrel maturation. Over the years, enology literature has offered a wide range of recommendations regarding the ideal climatic conditions for aging wine in wooden barrels, highlighting how different temperatures - from as low as four degrees Celsius to as high as 20 degrees Celsius - can either accelerate or decelerate the wine’s aging process.
“Barrel aging mainly means subjecting the wine to an oxidative process,” says Nicolas Vivas, a wine consultant and researcher at the University of Bordeaux’s Demptos Research Center. “Today, the trend is towards obtaining fresher wines that focus on fruit expression. To achieve that, barrel rooms need to be maintained at temperatures lower than 18 degrees Celsius, around 14 to 15 degrees Celsius.”
According to Vivas, higher temperatures may lead to loss of freshness and fruit expression, and to the development of heavier aromas such as jam, honey, or cooked and overripe fruit. Warmer conditions can also negatively affect the color of the wine and limit its aging potential. Crucially, heat increases the risk of off-flavors and bacterial infections - for instance from Brettanomyces bruxellensis - potentially leading to spoilage.
Here, experts weigh in on the myriad ways that climatic conditions like temperature, humidity, and drought can affect the barrel-aging process during winemaking.
A matter of style
“Maturing at higher temperatures can be a stylistic choice,” says Vivas. “In Bordeaux, people would age at higher temperatures in the first six to 12 months, and drop them in the second year. This way you make an easier, fruitier wine but you also have faster oxidation in the bottle, that’s why now many are adopting a different approach.”
India’s Sula Vineyards has been betting on cooler temperatures over the past five years, an approach that winemaker Karan Vasani claims has had noticeable beneficial effects on the wine’s aromatic qualities and ageability.
“We used to mature wines at around 17 to 18 degrees Celsius,” says Vasani. “Then, in 2018, we decided to bring it down to 14 degrees Celsius because our evolution in the barrel was too fast. Now we feel that we get better maturation, better wine quality, and better protection from microbial spoilage. The profile of the wine has increased significantly.”
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