In the course of our business we have cause to interact with a lot of winery principals and winemakers. For the most part, we are passionate about the subject and so are they. Our general rule for buying is to taste everything that comes in the door with as little comment as possible and ask questions when we have them. Invariably there will be someone on the other side of the table that pushes us to make some sort of evaluation. “What did you think?” We usually tell them honestly because we are simply too busy to sugar coat it if the answer may not be to their liking.
We don’t claim to be winemakers. But we have tasted enough wine in our lives to have a pretty good idea of what is what, and likely have been through way more variety than most of the folks that make the stuff. Sometimes the discussions can get a little heated because telling someone their wine isn’t as special as they think is like telling them their children are ugly. We get that. But we see a lot of people in a day and, frankly, if you don’t give it to them straight, they are going to take up more time trying to make a sale they are never going to make. It’s a waste of our time and theirs.
While we do know our stuff, we are respectful of the difficulty of their task. When somebody ‘nails it’, we tell them that, too, because we understand all that goes into the process. There are countless decisions to be made at every turn in winemaking, and they are all mediated by the unpredictable weather. How to farm, how to prune, when to pick, and each of a plethora of other decisions has an impact on the final stuff in the bottle.
We know some people are aware of this stuff. But it is important for everyone to step back and look at it every so often. It helps one to really appreciate the complicated nature of the whole process and how each decision compounds to take the juice to a totally unique end result, and one that is final. If you don’t like the color of your kitchen, you can paint it. With a lot of things, you can make changes to get what you want. One supposes you can do that with wine, too, via blending. But you will never have exactly the same juice in the end because every decision makes some difference (albeit sometimes minute) and you’ll never know for sure if the wine would have been even better had you made a different decision (or several) along the way.
Just to make the point, let us simply look at the question of wood. First, of course, is deciding whether or not you want to use oak at all. For some varieties, oak barrels may not enhance the wine, so it may not really be an option. We do know producers that, even though the varietal or genre typically does not see oak, choose to have the juice spend the time in neutral barrels simply for the transfer of oxygen and textural enhancement.
Yes we said the ‘O’ word, and oxygen is wine’s greatest enemy…except when it isn’t. Yes, that oxygen in the empty portion of a half bottle of wine will kill it. But in the cellar, the controlled introduction of oxygen via barrels of larger volumes of liquid is an important part of rounding out the finished wine. Contact with oak literally polishes the edges and softens the mid-palate, desirable in some wines but not all. It can also impart tannins which can enhance or detract depending on the wine.
So the winemaker has to first decide whether wood fits into his program at all. If it does, then the fun really begins. The winemaker has to make multiple and sometimes collective decisions about how he is going to utilize oak barrels in whatever he is making. There are several adjunct decisions that go long with that, in no particular order.
He must consider the age of the barrels. Some only want the rounding out of the wine and therefore will use only barrels that are more than three years old. At that point, the amount of flavor influence the wood itself has on the wine is virtually nil. He can decide he actually wants a fair bit of oak influence in the finished wine in which case he may choose to use all new barrels. Or he may choose to use a combination of barrels of different ages so that he has some flexibility in blending at the end.
At that point he can choose how much of the oak influence makes sense for that particular juice.
It is important to note a couple of things here. The more common regimen is to have some new barrels, some one year old and some two years old so that there are plenty of options for blending. He must also decide how long to leave it in whatever vessels he chooses as that can affect the overall profile as much as the age of the oak. There seems to be a trend away from using high percentages of new oak these days on anything except the very top cuvee, and, even at that, we hear a lot of winemakers say they are ‘dialing back’ the amount of new oak.
So you’ve decided you are going to use oak, and have an idea of what you want to try with respect to the ages of the barrels. The next step, too, presents a huge arena of choices. French or American were, and still are the usual barrel options. But these days we also hear people talking about experimenting with Hungarian, Yugoslavian, or Russian woods as well. So you decide to go French. Which forest? Each particular oak has different tightness of the grain and imparts different flavors on the finished wine. The current darlings of the elite are Taransaud and Darnajou, but you hear names like Nevers, Limosin, Troncais, Allier and Vosges fairly regularly if you are paying attention to this sort of thing.
There are different sources for American oak barrels as well, but America is a big place. Woods can come from Pennsylvania, Missouri or Oregon (and those are just a few areas we hear about), and some insist there are vast differences between those, too. Of course point some winemakers will just buy whatever is the best they can find through a broker. Other folks are very specific and get more involved. Not only is the type of wood an issue, but so is the ‘toast’ level (how much the interior wood is fire toasted). The decision to use light, medium, or heavy toast has its own distinct and significant effect on the flavors of the finished wine over and above the type of wood.
One also must decide on the cooper, the folks that make the oak barrels. There are a number of barrel producers both here and abroad, and the quality of the barrel is as important as the components. Some folks even take it a step further and have strong opinions about how the oak is ‘seasoned’. Basically, when green oak is harvested, it is not ready to be made into barrels. It needs to dry out and lose some of the moisture related flavors that would be present (and be detrimental) to a wine. The fresh wood is seasoned a number of ways, either via a drying kiln or, essentially sitting in a pile for a number of years, often outside. Three years is kind of the standard but some winemakers insist that wood is not seasoned enough until five years.
There are those that take it to the extreme of having their own barrels made to their specification. The most extreme example we heard not long ago was a winery that liked three different kinds of wood equally. So they had the cooper create barrels from alternating staves of those three different woods, with only the barrel heads toasted and not the side staves. It can get pretty specific when taken to the extreme, but usually that happens after much experimentation has been done (and a few unsatisfactory combinations sold off) and needs become more focused.
We aren’t even going to get into the financial decisions that are incumbent to any of those aspects. A top notch, new French oak barrel can cost upwards of $1500+, which ads $60 to the cost of a case of 12 bottles. If you are making even 1000 cases, the ‘oak bill’ can be substantial and one’s ability to purchase exactly what they want, when they need it, or have to cut a corner or two, is one of those decisions that nobody really wants to talk about, but it happens.
One can make comparisons between a winemaker and a chef. Sort of. There is a lot more science involved in winemaking and the financial stakes are much higher in managing an entire vintage of a wine from start to finish than creating a dish for a menu.
Our point? Well, while we don’t always agree with winemakers choices, we are respectful and mindful of the myriad of decisions they have to make on every aspect of the winemaking process. The risks are greater if you make a mistake, and there aren’t really any ‘do-overs’ as the ‘timing’ and sequence of the process is part of the equation, too. There is no rewind. So if there is that much to think about just picking out a wood program, imagine the entire process. It is demanding enough when Nature cooperates, and when it doesn’t, everything that may have worked last time may not be relevant next time.