I have a 12 Gal French barrel about 1 1/2 yrs old and it seems that is out of oak flavor already. I have rotated 4 wines into it and this last cab sauv has been in since July 10 and still very little oak flavor although the wine is coming along very nicely. I wonder if topping off twice a week is slowing down the oak extraction process? Or should I be doing something to the barrel between each wine change? Up to now the barrel has been continously full with quick rinse of so2. thanks Joe
Pino, you now have a "neutral" oak barrel. Barrels run out of oak flavor in time. I have a couple of these in my cellar. Now I add StaVin oak beans to wine in the barrel and still benefit from the concentration and mellowing of flavors that occurs while barrel aging. I don't think you need to top up twice a week. I keep "top-up" wine in beer bottles. My 10-gallon barrel needs one 12 ounce beer bottle of wine every two weeks to stay full.
Depends on the wine. For red wines and probably most whites barrel aging will make a better wine IMO. There is a slow evaporation taking place in a barrel. This concentrates the wine flavors. There's something about the oak that also smooths out the wine taking away those rough falvors you notice in a young wine. While you can add oak flavor you can't duplicate these other effects in a carboy or tank. My barrels are old and out of oak flavor but I still use them year round. I either add StaVin American oak beans or some French Oak chips that I have a lifetime supply of. There are some white wines that are made without oak flavor. For these wines a carboy is fine but if you have an old, neutral oak barrel that has only been used for white wine certain white wines can benefit...such as Chablis-style chardonnay, pinot gris or even my old Vidal.
The only thing I would add here is that applies to a properly toasted barrel. I have 5 gallon untoasted and like an idiot I didn't disassemble it and toast it. The flavors untoasted oak impart are different and just didn't seem compatible with my reds. They literally are hard or harsh, not subtle at all. It's fairly neutral now so I'm as happy with it as I am going to get. It was a gift.
Taking a barrel apart and getting it back together isn't rocket science but does require attention to detail. Joe
1.5 years sounds too soon for your barrels to be neutral. I've owned 1 American Oak barrel and currently I'm using 3 - 15 gallon French Oak barrels. To me, the extraction from French Oak is much more subtle. I also think that Cab Sauv stands up well to the oak flavor, that is, it's not easily overwhelmed. Since you're using a 'broken-in' barrel and Cab Sauv it may just mean that you need to give it time. I would give it at least a year. Last year I put my Cab Sauv into to 2 new French Oak barrels. It is still there doing nicely and IMO is not anywhere near being over-oaked. Topping up twice per week for a used barrel sounds like a lot. I top up twice per month and haven't had a problem.
When changing wines, I give the barrel a couple of good rinses of very warm water and even let it sit a few minutes. Tartrates that deposit on the inside of the barrels will require some heat for them to resolubilize. I find this helps get them off the barrel walls. It's not perfect but it helps.
You don't have to treat the barrel any differently than you have been. Just add the chips. If these are bigger barrels they make other products you might be interested in too. They make a 'stave' that is basically a strip of toasted oak and larger scale wineries like them too. They aren't used in small lot winemaking much because the size makes it tough to scale the right amount of oak.
I have used both Sta Vin beans and chips and side by side the Sta Vin is a little better to my taste but the cost per gallon is several times higher. Overall, it's nothing compared to a barrel though. It's hard to describe but I think they a little less 'woody' than chips. I used American oak at the same qty (by weight) on the same wine. (It could have something to do with weighting it in all honesty, the Sta Vin is a uniform size, the chips are not exactly uniform.) The difference was slight to me, chips taste fine too. If I wasn't comparing them side by side I doubt i would have had an opinion. I like a lot of oak so the differences may be more pronouced if made differently to others too.
I don't care for the sawdust looking material although I am trying an experiment with the dust put in right at fermentation. It didn't ruin anything, I'm curious how it will end up. I did ruin one by adding too much dust after fermentation. It became blending wine...
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