Back in the days of my callow youth, when mullets and boy-bands roamed the earth with impunity, your humble narrator was a wide-eyed newcomer to the world of wine, having recently moved up from the fizzy yellow swill that passed as beer in those dark days.
In those halcyon days of youth, the whole concept of aging wine was a mystery, which took years of patient boozing to fully understand.
If we peer back through the ages, we find that the first vessels used to hold wine were wooden barrels and clay amphorae, which is a fancy-pants word for clay jar.
When the ancient Roman emperors got it into their wine-addled orgy-loving minds to expand the empire across the known world, a big problem they faced was how to carry their wine around while sacking and burning the barbarian villages.
Putting some of those wise philosophers to the task, it was soon determined that large jars of clay were the best method. Although significantly heavier than wooden barrels, the clay amphorae were airtight, so the wine did not spoil as easily on long journeys.
Thumbing their noses at the Romans, the Mesopotamians (now modern-day Iraq) fashioned crude barrels from palm wood. While palm wood was much lighter than clay, it was very difficult to make airtight, so spillage and spoilage were a constant challenge.
Eventually, the expanding Roman Empire came in contact with the Gauls (now modern-day France), who were transporting beer in wooden barrels made from oak instead of palm wood.
This was a momentous discovery, as oak was much more pliable than palm wood, making it much easier to bend the staves to form an airtight barrel.
Furthermore, the tight grain of the oak made it nearly impervious to moisture, so much less of the wine was lost due to absorption.
The final nail in the coffin for clay amphorae was not discovered until the oak barrels had been used for several years, but it soon became common knowledge that wine stored in oak barrels actually came out tasting better than when it went in.
The naturally occurring vanillin and lignin compounds in the oak barrels undergo chemical reactions with the phenolic compounds in the wine, softening the harsh flavours, and letting the true character of the wine shine through.
Master winemakers soon learned that charring the inside of their oak barrels made their wines even better, but it took centuries for organic chemistry to advance to the point that it could be explained that heat being applied to the oak lignin helped break down the fibres so they could chemically react with compounds in the wine, eliminating harsh tannic flavours in the process.
The average oak barrel costs close to $1000, and they can only be used a few times before they become effectively neutral, making barrels one of the largest expenses at a winery.
For this reason, most winemakers will age their white wines and lighter reds in stainless steel vats, with only a brief exposure to oak.
It is the more full-flavoured red wines that benefit most from exposure to oak, so most red wines will be aged in oak.
Bargain-priced wine may get the short end of the stave, by merely having oak chips thrown into a stainless steel vat for flavour extraction, but the higher-end wines are usually exclusively aged in oak barrels.
The two most common species of oak used for wine barrels are French Oak and American Oak. Barrels made from French Oak are more expensive, but impart much more flavour into the wine. American Oak barrels are more neutral-flavoured, so are often used for lighter-bodied wines.
Each oak barrel is unique, so there is no magic formula for determining exactly how long a wine needs to age in a particular barrel. Some barrels are charred more heavily than others, and certain barrels have tighter grains than others. Most wineries will extract a small sample of wine from each barrel for tasting, then blend multiple barrels together to get a consistent product.
Those hard-working oak barrels tirelessly work to make our wine better, until they eventually have all their lignin used up, when they are sold off to home décor stores to be used as rain barrels or decorative planters.
So, the next time you are enjoying your favourite red wine, be sure to tip your glass to the oak barrels that helped it become what it was meant to be!
