Aging Wine – An Odyssey of Containers

The wonder of nature has finally made its way to your cellar. The grapes you nurtured and fermented have relented. The bubbles of carbon dioxide have slowed from a turbid percolation to a fine sizzle and the lees have fallen. It’s time to choose a storage vessel, the place where and how your wine will age.

Several choices come to mind at the outset: oak barrels (and tanks), stainless steel, glass, and plastic. Each container can impart a measured benefit to the resulting wine. No container is perfect, but there are some that are better than others.

Oak barrels are the most popular choice for large, quality producers. Oak imparts flavor and structure into wine. Much of oak’s influence occurs as a result of the slow exchange of oxygen and water that mingles with the lignin in the wood.

Depending on the structure of the cells (American, French, Hungarian oak trees are all different) and the toast (light toast = green organic flavors / heavy toast = roasted bold flavors) each barrel can have a drastically different effect on a wine.

There is a concentration of flavors as the wine absorbs tannin from the wood and sheds water via osmosis into the drier air around the barrel.

Because oak is organic in nature it is a permeable container. If stored in a humid environment a lesser amount of concentration occurs within the barrel. If the environment is drier, a greater amount of water within the wine will be lost to the air in the cellar. Warmer temperatures have a similar effect. The amount of wine concentration/loss during a twelve-month period will be minimal, but the barrels should be topped up every few weeks with extra wine.