"A feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees" - Isaiah

This chapter deals mostly with barrel fermentation, and also provides details of how the yeast lees both protect and enrich wine. Barrel stirring, a much-misunderstood technique is examined in some depth. A brief look at pink wine concludes the chapter.

Chapter 18

Barrel fermentation

Today, fermenting white wine in barrel is standard practice for fine Chardonnay and, to a lesser extent, for other wines, but it is a relatively recent development in the New World. Brad Webb introduced this practice to California in the 1950s while directing winemaking at Hanzell. In the late ’60s, Dick Graff at Chalone was the first to combine using French oak barrels and malolactic fermentation. This has since become the standard. Numerous aspects warrant consideration while employing this technique.  

Barrel selection

Much ink has been spilled on the topic of barrels and wine. Entire books have been devoted to it.  The section in Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine is an excellent and concise general introduction. Oaks, the principal wood used for wine barrels, are botanically complex. More than 300 species are found worldwide, though only a handful of these have been used for wine barrels. Two species of European Oak are the standards for wine barrel flavor. Oaks, and indeed all plants, respond strongly to their habitats, so geographical origin has impacts on their flavor. Much of the best oak comes from French forests that have been state-owned for centuries. Substantial stands of these species can also be found in Eastern Europe. A different species of oak, found in North America, has been used traditionally for whiskey aging. This oak gives bourbon its signature flavor. The North American oak is different from European, both structurally and from a flavor point of view. This is unsurprising, given the biological and environmental differences between it and the European oaks.