Wine barrel for aging the wines
Wine is best when it is aged the most. For best aging equipment, wine barrels top the list.
Especially made of oak, a wine barrel has long been used as equipment where wines are characteristically aged. Aging the wine in oak wine barrel imparts pleasing flavors of spice, butter and vanilla to the wine. The wine barrel that is commonly preferred for keeping wines may vary in size yet the typical one holds about 225 liters or the so called barriques.
The use of this equipment to age and store wines has already been a tradition for centuries now. The French oak wood was seen as the most desirable material in making wine barrels. Mostly, it hails from two or more forests where oaks have been grown during the days of Napoleon to build ships. Ever since the beginning until the end of sailing ships period, the French oak forests have undergone constant forestry operations.
The five chief forests used in wine barrel production are
Vosges, Trancais, Nvers, Limousin and Allier. Each of them manufactures wood with distinguishing characteristics that involve wood grain tightness and oak flavor amount passed on to wines. Fixed grained woods most likely impart the characteristics of oak way slower compared to woods with grains that are looser. For most winemakers, they select wood material for wine barrel from diverse forests.
Meanwhile, the American oak was also temporarily used. Early research with this wood material for making wine barrels did not ended up a complete success because there was a great level of influence that the wine barrel had, with regards to the wine taste. One main thing that also affects the taste of wines is the preparation of the wood and the construction of the wine barrel. When the conventional French barrel manufacturing technique was used back, the results dramatically improved.
Possibly, the two highly considerable differences in barrel construction and wood preparation processes were the wood seasoning and the manner the staves were set. Normally, the production starts with air-drying the wood for about 24 months to achieve right seasoning. American barrel producers got used to manufacturing whiskey barrels and applied the kiln-dry technique to appropriately spice the wood. The whiskey wine barrel staves were not split, but rather sawn.
French wine barrel makers on the other hand split the woods along the wood grain to create the staves. Splitting than sawing the staves can provide a more subtle effect on the wine.
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