Advertisement
Wood Influence: Manufacturing techniques
Appears in
Published 2006
Several aspects of barrel making can have a marked impact on wine flavour. One particularly controversial issue is whether barrels made from hand-split staves are perceptibly superior to their counterparts made from sawn staves; carefully controlled research in this area is rare.
The method of drying the wood can also affect wine character. Wines, particularly those naturally low in tannins themselves, can taste aggressively tannic after being matured in barrels made from kiln-dried, as opposed to air-dried, wood. Finally, the degree to which the staves are heated while being bent, or the level of barrel toast, also has an obvious and profound effect on flavour (see barrel making).