Do you know why wine is stored in oak barrels?

 

The fate of oak barrels and wine is not a deliberate arrangement, but an inadvertent encounter, and this encounter has to be talked about two thousand years ago. At that time, the Romans were expanding the territory of the Roman Empire on a large scale in Europe. During the march, they not only needed to carry a lot of food and weapons, but also a lot of wine, because under the conditions at the time, drinking wine was not only safer than drinking water directly, but also provided calories for marching soldiers.

At that time, people often used amphora to transport wine over long distances, and occasionally palm barrels from Mesopotamia. Clay pots are made of clay. Although they have good sealing properties, they are heavy and not easy to carry; while palm barrels are lighter, but palms are not easy to bend and are expensive to manufacture. With the expansion of the Roman Empire, neither of the above-mentioned containers can meet the needs of soldiers for long-distance transportation of wine when they march and fight.

This problem was not solved until Roman soldiers marched all the way north and reached the Gaul region. The Roman soldiers discovered that the locals used a wooden barrel made of oak to transport beer. The texture of this wood is softer than other woods and easy to bend. At the same time, they have excellent leak-proof properties and are widely distributed in the European continent. , Easy to obtain materials. When the Roman soldiers used oak barrels to store wine, they made a new discovery-the wine that has been in contact with oak barrels will become more delicious, the texture becomes softer, and the aroma and flavor develop more complex And pleasant. In addition, they also found that the longer the liquor is stored in oak barrels, the more obvious the influence of oak barrels will be, and this has led to the tradition of using oak barrels for aging wine. These advantages of oak barrels made it popular in just 200 years, and gradually replaced tens of thousands of amphora.

Nowadays, oak barrels are widely used to mature wine to enhance the flavor and structure of the liquor. Specifically, when wine is aged in oak barrels, the fine pores on the oak barrel wall allow trace oxygen to penetrate into the barrel and contact the wine, making the wine's taste more rounded and smoother, and three types have been developed. aroma. At the same time, the tannins and flavor substances carried by the oak barrels can give the wine more tannins, structure, aroma and flavor.

Generally speaking, oak barrels of different sizes and old and new levels have varying degrees of influence on wine. Under normal circumstances, the newer the oak barrel and the smaller the capacity, the more significant the impact on the wine flavor. The smaller the capacity of the oak barrel, the larger the unit area of ​​the wine and the oak barrel, so it can affect the wine to a greater extent. The newer the oak barrel means that the oak barrel itself carries more tannins and flavor substances, so the flavor and tannins that it brings to the wine are more abundant. With the increase in the number and time of oak barrels, the flavor and tannins that can be imparted to the wine become less and less, until there is not much left. Therefore, new oak barrels have a greater impact on wine than old oak barrels.

At the same time, the origin of the oak barrels and the degree of toasting of the oak barrels will also have different effects on the wine. The wood texture of French oak barrels is usually tighter, with less oak lactones, and has a softer effect on the liquor during the process of maturing wine; while American oak barrels contain more oak lactones, which can usually give Wine brings more unrestrained, full-bodied aroma and flavor. 

 https://www.gezhuo.com/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

After 5 years, this Chinese whisky distillery released the world’s first rice wine barrel

Image
  "The biggest difference between this time and the last time is that all the equipment is here, and the factory has gradually shifted from the overall equipment debugging to the production feed." After half a year, Weijiu entered the Laizhou Distillery again. This time this production capacity has completely unveiled the mystery of the world's top whisky distillery. On October 19th, the Laizhou Kaiyuan Barrel Filling Ceremony with the theme of "Laozhou·Future Has Been" was held in the factory area of ​​Laizhou Distillery. It is worth noting that the first batch of yellow wine barrels of Laizhou Distillery were officially filled, which is the first innovation in the world. Some people in the industry believe that the combination of rice wine barrels and whiskey not only opened the first year of Laizhou whiskey, but also marked the creative integration of Laizhou whiskey and Chinese culture, and represented Laizhou’s technological innovation and it
Read more

What did oak barrels do to wine?

The use of oak barrels by humans can be traced back to the 5th century BC, when the ancient Celts creatively made oak into wooden barrels to store water and ale and other liquids. In the dark Middle Ages, after the craftsmanship of oak barrels spread to Western Europe, it naturally became the first choice for Europeans to store wine. Sealed oak barrels are ideal for the transportation of wine. They are not only large in capacity, easy to move, strong in structure, but also reusable.  For thousands of years, the identity of oak barrels was merely a container for storing and transporting wine; but in the last 100 years, people began to care about the impact of oak barrels on the taste and maturation of wine. For a while, "oak barrel aging" has become a very important part of the entire winemaking process, and not only the winemaker, even ordinary consumers will be very concerned about the role of oak barrels. "Before the 20th century, oak flavour had always
Read more