Chips in Wine

Wine drinkers are happy to pay more for wines aged in barrels. They are correct in assuming that the wine-grower uses his high-quality wines to produce these. These are often made from older vines which only allow for small harvests anyway or the yield has been reduced by cutting and selection. In the ideal case, they have more vigor, extracts and taste and thus can stand ageing in barrels better than light, more simple wines.

The final price for these high-quality wines is higher due to the costs of a barrel (225 liter oak barrel), which can be up to 1,000 euros, and each barrel can only be used 1 to 4 times.

Thrifty wine-growers hit on the idea of putting oak chips into the storage tanks instead of aging the wine in barrels. Doing this does give the wine a woody aroma, but there is no aging in barrels and thus no exposure to oxygen. In addition to saving money for the barrels, this avoids having the wine evaporate in small barrels. (the evaporated wine is call the wine of the angels).

These procedures are not damaging to one’s health, but they do deceive wine drinkers if the label indicates aging in barrels or if the winery, the price, the origin or the character of a wine aged in barrels may lead the wine drinker to assume that this has actually been done.

There are some rumors about the next step, which would be to eliminate the oak chips and to use synthetic oak aromas.

Erich Hartl
hartl@weinpur.de
www.organicwinepure.com

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