Barrels vs. Chips

This is a bit of an overspill from my beer blog, but I just wanted to clarify a point I was trying to make on the Aleheads blog. It's essentially why I feel that chips are not as good as barrels with respect to quality wine-making. Brother Barley makes the following point with reference to using oak chips rather than barrels:

First, there’s the problem of stigma. In the wine industry, many (if not most) educated oenophiles won’t even purchase a wine if they believe it’s been aged with oak chips instead of barrels. Even though blind taste tests have proven that wine drinkers can’t tell the difference, there is still a strong belief that wood chips are the “wrong” way to oak-age wine. While this kind of “old-school” mentality is less prevalent amongst Aleheads than oenophiles, it’s still an issue.

Although I'm loathe to disagree with the point that Brother Barley makes in that there isn't a discernible difference between oak chips and a new oak barrel, because I've never been in a position to taste the same wine made using the two different methods. I think the point about it being an old school mentality is a bit of an over-simplification.

The problem is that, in a way, saying you use oak chips is pretty much confessing that your wine is no good in the first place, as would using new oak simply to make up for a lack of character - it's no substitute for making a good wine in the first place. To quote the Oxford Companion to Wine:

Oaky is a tasting term usually applied to wines too heavily influenced by oak flavour, which smell and taste more of wood than fruit, and may be aggressively tannic and dry.*

What you can't do with oak chips, which Brother Barley explains in his following paragraph with reference to "used bourbon-barrels or scotch-barrels," is impart character from the 'previous inhabitant' of the barrel, as it were. In the case of wine-making, this previous inhabitant is invariably wine rather than something else. Because new barrels are expensive and their characteristics not always desirable (they can overpower a subtle wine) they are generally used with moderation, and in conjunction with older barrels - complexity of flavour is the key.

Top wineries that do use a lot of new oak allow the wines an extended period of maturation in the barrels, and I'd suggest this process of slow stabilisation and clarification, along with a mild oxygenation, is at least as important as a simple imparting of wood flavour. Almost inevitably, there are relatively new micro-oxygenation techniques that are designed to replicate even this, but they are yet to be widely used.

* 3rd Ed. p.491

'Noe' Pedro Ximénez Viejo

If you take some white grapes, ones that would probably make a rather indifferent table wine, then you let them dry out in the sun, make a wine from the juice that's left, fortify it, and generally - in contravention of just about every other rule of wine storage/making you haven't broken yet - let it oxidise over thirty years or so, do you have any right to expect the stuff to be drinkable?

Well that's kind of what the folks at Gonzalez Byass have been up to with this superlative dessert wine. The wine itself is dark and syrupy. Unctuously sweet, viscous, treacly-brown and chock full of fig, date and raisin flavours. It was the perfect match for Christmas pudding, which of course no Christmas meal is complete without, or even just with a cheeky mince pie on boxing day.

At £15 for a half bottle it's obviously not cheap. But I think you've got to put that into some sort of context. Are there many better sherries on the market than this? I'd suggest not, and so what do you compare it to as one of the best examples of its type on the market? £15 won't buy you a lot of First Growth Claret, or Château d'Yquem, or even vintage port. All of a sudden it looks like a bit of a steal - a great treat for Christmas at least. I've already got one squirrelled away for next year.

15.5% abv. £15 (ish) from Majestic

If you're interested in discovering a bit more there's a great piece about sherry at the Wine Anorak.

'Z' de l'Arjolle 2005

2012 is upon us, and I'm hoping to get the opportunity to try more wines this year than last, although I have probably said that every year!

I just wanted to mention a couple of wines I had over the festive period (the next I'll cover in another blog post). The first I had saved for Christmas dinner. Since we had eight adults eating all sorts of different dishes I toyed with the idea of something non-controversial, but then I wasn't sure how much attention anyone would pay to it anyway, so dug this out...

Zinfandel from the Languedoc. I'm pretty sure there's not a lot of that about, it's not a wine that comes under QWPSR jurisdiction, which is probably all the better for us consumers. It also means the vintage has to be kind of disguised as a 'harvest/récolte' 2005 and the grape isn't allowed to be displayed at all - hence the rather cryptic 'Z.'

All EU-driven red-tape aside this is a really excellent wine, still lots of blackberry fruit and peppery spice even six years after the vintage. It's big and full-bodied, but it's not a 16% Californian fruit bomb, and the dryness brings an elegance that can be lacking with trends towards excessive 'hang-time.'

13.5% abv. The Wine Society are currently on the 2007 vintage, selling it for £13.95 a bottle. At that price, I think it's a bit of a bargain.

Wine Recommendation

Alamos Mendoza Malbec 2010

The Americans are going mad for Argentinian Malbec at the moment, so for this one to be around at £7.99 probably means someone at Majestic's buying department got themselves a bit of a steal.

If you're like me and leave all your Christmas shopping until the last minute this is one to grab as a good solid wine that should keep things flowing over the Christmas period. Since it's not too overt a new-world fruit bomb this is one that can be enjoyed by everyone, even in the five minutes between Friday and Tuesday that they're not eating!

Expect lots of soft, autumnal black fruit on the nose, a faint whiff of bonfires. It's medium bodied with black cherry and blackberry all backed up with a faint tarriness and supple tannins.

£7.99 from Majestic

Thought of the Day

It occurred to me this afternoon, while I was supposed to be busy doing something else, that books and Pinot Noir have a similarly alluring aroma to them.

This applies to both the new; the freshly opened lively new world Pinot or the sometimes medicinal, clean print smells of a book you've just bought, and the old; the more illusive, the reassuring atmosphere created by old books in a library or the leafy humus and farmyard aromas of a a mature wine.

I'm sure this can't be a coincidence, even if it's entirely psychological.