Oak Notes 1: French or American?

Different oaks for different folks.

The first historical appearance of wooden vessels for storing food and other items occur in Egyptian wall paintings somewhere around  2600 BC.  Wooden barrels found in European lake mud have been carbon dated to the Bronze Age.

Pliny the Elder writes that cooperage  (barrel making) in Europe originated with the Gauls and describes their use for storage of dry goods, butter, mead, and, of course, wine.    Julius Caesar creatively used wooden barrels as pontoons for bridges and launched burning barrels of tar into enemy villages by catapult.

When he wasn’t roasting Franks, Caesar, like most Romans also enjoyed wine and, by this time,  wine drinkers were learning to appreciate the positive flavor effects that oak barrels contributed to red wines.

Since that time oak and wine have been inexorably linked and making wine better is a much more civilized use of a limited resource than igniting villagers.

But, which oak and why?

Winemakers today have a basic choice to make when selecting oak barrels - French* or American oak?   *(that includes Romanian, Hungarian, Slovenian and other varieties of European oaks.)

American oak grows faster that European oak and has a more open grain structure.  This allows more contact with low density spring wood and the wine and results in more and quicker chemical reaction with wine - especially tannins.  American oak gives bolder contribution of coconut, vanilla and cinnamon.  

French oak (primarily Quercus petraea) is a much slower growing species and has finer texture (more and smaller growth rings per inch) with smaller voids and lower early wood/late wood ratio and results in a slow more subtle reaction with wine.  Wines made in French oak tend to be silkier, with subtle spice flavors and subtle yet firmer tannin impact.

At Rewine Barrels 97% of the barrels we sell are French, about 2% Hungarian and <1% American.

Please contact us at 541 968 5003 or rewinebarrels@gmail.com to discuss your barrel needs or if you just want to talk about wine and wood - our two favorite subjects.