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After the long wait for the wood to mature, the staves – the bands
of timber that form the body of the barrel – are made and selected.
On average, it takes 18 to 25 staves to make a barrel. Once they are put
together, the burning process can start.
As I mentioned in my previous column, wine storage barrels
are burned internally before use for a number of reasons. First, the heating
makes the wood bendable so that it may be shaped into barrels. Heat mellows
the undesirable, bitter compounds – such as tannins – in the
wood that could have a deleterious effect on the wine. Conversely, burning
modifies the aromatic impact of the barrel, which can thus bring new dimensions
of flavor to the wine.
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For
the uninitiated, here are some of the flavors that one can expect from
oak barrels and the burning thereof. Obviously, there is oak flavor, or
a charred taste, with coconuts, cloves, vanilla, caramel, toasted bread,
grilled almonds and bitter almonds sometimes notable on the palate.
There are three different levels of heating:
light, medium and heavy. Light heating is normally not used for wine barrels.
Medium heating is much more widely used: you can now find toasted notes,
such as grilled almonds and coffee, in more wines these days. Heavy burning
chars the wood quite deeply, until you start to see cracks in the timber.
With this kind of burning, you reach the maximum acceptable level of grilled
and spicy aromas.
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“Burning
modifies the aromatic impact of the barrel, which can thus bring
new dimensions of flavor to the wine.” |
It would be
convenient if you could simply choose the level of heating you want for
your wine, and bingo! You have your style. Unfortunately, this is not
the case. It is the quality of the grapes that matters the most, and then
it is the wine making method that tells you what you can do and use. To
be able to use heavy burning you need to have grapes that are very concentrated,
tough, and possessed of a lot of tannins, such as Cabernet Sauvignon or
Syrah. The top Bordeaux producers, therefore, can get away with using
heavy burning, and with extraordinary results – albeit after 10
or more years of bottle aging.
Because of the success of these Bordeaux
wines, everybody is following suit and putting their wine into wooden
barrels for maturation – if one can call under one year in oak barrels
maturing, as some wine producers seem to do. And this is very unfortunate.
Most wines should never even get close to these barrels. Many wines produced
this way are generally too light, and the result is a woody wine that
masks the fruitiness and the character of the wine. Often, you find such
wines to be too dry in mouth. |