Oaking Your Wine February 25 2015, 0 Comments
Winemakers, you STILL don't need to be bored in February! We've been talking about ways to put the finishing touches on your wine at this time of year, and today we're following up last week's post on Cold Stabilization with some tips on Oaking!:
Oaking your wine is a great way to alter the flavor, texture, stability, and character of your grape wines. Putting your wine in contact with oak will improve the wine's stability, soften harsher aspects of young wine, add lovely vanilla flavors, and smooth out the overall mouthfeel and texture of the wine. Even if you don't have an oak barrel handy, you can use French or American oak spirals or oak chips to oak your wine. For a 5 gallon batch, about 1-2 spirals or 3 oz of chips for 4-8 weeks (or longer if you like) is usually about right, but taste your wine periodically and simply rack the wine off the oak when you're happy with the results!