Oak chips in season

Wines & Vines, Sept, 2002 by Jane Firstenfeld

Let's assume you're in business, a reasonable assumption, since you're reading a trade journal. Let's also me you want to provide the best-possible product for your customers, and that you want to do so at the lowest possible cost. Would you be interested in using a tool, a newish technology with proven results, that could help improve your product, simplify your job and lower your production costs? Sure you would.

And if this product were made by a supplier you know and trust, if it were safe and all-natural, would you feel you had to conceal its use from your customers? After all, wine is, as we say, a food product, and food manufacturers make a big deal about, even charge extra for "all-natural" products.

Why is it, then, that so many winemakers who use oak chips and other oak barrel alternatives would rather not talk about it? Is it, as one supplier--and cooper--said, because "they are not as glamorous as barrels"?

Granted, the wine business has its mystique, and oak barrels are an integral part of that. Still, though most of the "alternative" suppliers I spoke with sell their products all over the winemaking world, and although most of them also supply traditional oak barrels to the same clientele, only one of half-a-dozen winemakers (and acknowledged barrel alternative buyers) I contacted would speak on the record about oak chips. (I use the term generically, though there are many different proprietary variations on the theme.)

Suppliers, on the other hand, were more than happy to open up, and I was happy to learn that the topic of chips is not nearly as dry, nor the uses of oak alternatives nearly as limited as I had imagined. And though they've been produced commercially for almost 30 years, oak alternatives are still closely allied to the barrel-making tradition from which they were born.

The craft of cooperage is not quite as old as the art of winemaking. It's believed that the first wooden barrels were created around 350 B.C. by the Celts, who used them for transporting and storing all manner of liquid and solid products. Since then, barrels have been largely superseded by less expensive, more flexible containers in almost every other area of manufacture and commerce. Today, a silent "wine" precedes the word "barrels" in most minds.

That other mainstay of fermentation, aging and storage, stainless steel tanks are also ubiquitous today, though they gained mass acceptance only within the last 40 years. Today, almost every commercial winery utilizes the individual properties of both oak barrels and stainless tanks. But according to my sources, between 50% and 90% of U.S. wineries also employ oak barrel alternatives in their winemaking process.

The Virtues of Versatility

Oak alternatives come in a variety of forms, each of which brings distinct advantages to the winemaking process. The array of form and flavor ranges from powder through chips up to full-sized tank staves. Each of these is obtained from the same basic material as the venerated wine barrel--French, Hungarian or American oak--then trimmed and toasted in custom recipes that offer winemakers an almost infinite ability to fine-tune their products. (This article will concentrate on the smaller particulate alternatives--the larger staves merit their own story.)

"It's like making a roux," says Bob Rogers, a principal of Innerstave in Sonoma, and a former winemaker for a boutique winery in Napa. Like a creative chef, a winemaker can introduce, "a dash here, a dash there. It's like part of the spice rack." Rogers, who claims to have developed "toasted" oak chips while working in Australia, notes that different oak chip styles will each create different products.

"Your wine reflects your style, your artistic endeavor," he says. A winemaker must consider his desired end-product and then ask himself, "How will I make it taste the way I want?" Rogers' opinion is informed by a large data base--Innerstave sells to wineries in 20 countries in the winemaking world.

For red wines, the use of oak chips often begins as early as primary fermentation, when many vintners choose powdered or fine tobacco forms of toasted oak, sprinkled either directly on the grapes in the hopper or onto the juice or must.

In this step, according to Ed Larmie, director of sales and marketing for World Cooperage in Sebastopol, Calif., the function is primarily to remove undesirable vegetal characteristics. The finely pulverized or shredded oak also can add body and midpalate to white wines, he says.

"We did some experiments last year, and added mid-palate without overt oak character. The small particle size assures complete oak extraction and offers the winemaker the option to continue with barrel aging without over-oaking the wine," Larmie adds. The fine texture of the oak allows it to be pressed or filtered out with the lees, without the danger of clogging pumps or hoses.

Using fine oak chips at this primary stage has other benefits, and is becoming quite standard throughout the industry, according to Brian Geagan of Xtraoak in Santa Rosa, Calif., a division of Canton Cooperage, and himself a former cellarmaster at Belvedere Vineyards and Winery in Healdsburg, Calif.