Oak barrels are obsolete, according to United States vinters, who say aging wine in metal tanks with pieces of oak thrown in costs less and tastes just as good.
Braving the stigma of being branded ”voodoo vintners” by traditionalists, oak alternative vinters have produced award-winning wines at bargain prices.
”The proof is in the pudding,” said Jeff Runquist, wine maker at McManis Family Vineyards in the northern California town of Ripon. ”Put the wine in your mouth and tell me whether the oak you taste came from a barrel or from chips.”
”I’ll be damned if anyone could walk in here and tell the difference.”
Rows of insulated stainless steel tanks, each holding the equivalent of 300 barrels of wine, towered in rows on thick concrete slabs at the McManis winery.
Strips of French oak hung in some tanks, while nylon mesh ”tea bags” of oak cubes steeped in others, bringing the wood to the wine instead of the wine to the wood.
If the wine contained in the 162 tanks were in barrels, the winery would need several hectares of warehouse space and plenty more workers, said associate wine maker Mike Robustelli.
”We feel that we can take better care of the wine in here than in barrels,” Robustelli said. ”It also lets me be more creative. After all, wine making is an art.”
Coopers toast oak alternatives to suit vintners that can then put it in tanks to impart flavour-shaping tannins and oils to thousands of gallons of wine at once, Robustelli said.
While US oak barrels in California typically cost $250 and French oak barrels $650, alternatives can mimic the effect for a mere $1,10, according to Todd Nathan, vice-president of Oak Chip in the city of Piketon, Ohio.
”It didn’t take long for the bean counters to figure out that was the way to go,” Nathan told Agence France-Presse. ”We are trying to put the barrel guys out of business.”
Oak Chip sold approximately 2-million kilorammes of oak in chip or other forms to the wine industry in 2005, according to Nathan.
”Every major winery in the world is using alternatives in some form or fashion, there is no doubt about that or I wouldn’t be in business,” Nathan said. ”There is not a continent I don’t hit with them.”
Even in France, where oak alternatives have been decried as blasphemous, vintners add wood blocks to wine under the pretence of weighing down sediment or filtering, according to Alicia McBride of Sonoma Valley company Innerstave, an oak-alternative company which claimed to have pioneered the method in 1979.
”Tradition runs so deep in wine that it is difficult for wine makers to go around telling people they didn’t use barrels,” McBride said.
McBride stressed that she sells flavour, not oak. ”I’m not a wood house; I’m a flavour house,” McBride said. ”It just so happens my flavour gets into the wine through the wood.”
”We have vanilla, caramel, chocolate, crème brûlée, coffee, mocha … and that warm spread on your tongue.”
Oak alternatives are common in wines in the $10 price range, but have been used to craft vintages selling at $100 a bottle, McBride said.
Runquist is convinced that barrels are becoming obsolete.
”Years ago, you’d be leery about explaining your use of oak alternatives, but you get older and decide life is too short to live a lie,” said Runquist, who has made wine for 30 years.
”You want to call me a cheater, fine,” he said. ”I say let the marketplace decide.”
McManis produced more than seven million litres last year, making its own wine as well as supplying vintages for labels in several European countries and the Philippines, Robustelli said.
McManis was recently contracted to provide wine for store brand labels belonging to two major British supermarket chains, according to Robustelli.
”They may call it voodoo wine making,” said Robustelli. ”But it’s terrific wine.” – AFP
