I had an excellent Rioja a couple months ago that was flat out delicious, and I found it it did not use American oak. Left me scratching my head why the Spaniards are doing this wine they have closer sources for wood. I’m sure there is some historical story behind it, but it just doesn’t work for me.
History. Remember that using wood for flavor is fairly recent. It was always used for storage. And the “barrels” used are not always and have not always been those 225 liter barrique types we imagine.
Spain is mostly desert and there haven’t been large forests for thousands of years, maybe longer. Many of the forests of Europe have been cut down over the centuries. Bordeaux was not always a land of vineyards. When the Romans were there it was marshy and forested. They shipped wine in from elsewhere. But as those forests disappeared, the wood became more precious. It was needed for buildings, storage, ships, and fuel. So it was an important resource.
Spain hit pay dirt when they found the Americas because suddenly they had access to forests as far as they could see. That wood is what built their ships. After they lost their position to the English, they still had trade routes to central and south America and as the wine making changed in the 1700s and 1800s, rather than pay the French, the Hapsburgs, or whoever else they would have to dicker with in Europe, it was easier to bring back wood from the Americas. Except for a few interludes with Texans and Teddy Roosevelt, Spain generally had pretty decent trading terms with the US and was able to get wood for less than they’d be charged by the French. In the 1950s and 60s and 70s and 80s, when oak became more important for flavor than for its mechanical properties, they were under Franco for the first part of that and it took a generation after for people to start re-thinking their oak. Today there are many different approaches.
Some bodegas make two wines, one with American and one with French oak. Some eschew American oak altogether. Some use blends, like staves from one and ends from another. Some use Hungarian or Slovenian oak. And as Mel described Ridge, many of them are constantly tasting and experimenting. The traditional Rioja producers tend to stay with American oak for their traditional wines, but elsewhere that’s not the case at all. Lopez, Muga, Rioja Alta and a few others have their own coopers building barrels on site and age their own wood from Kentucky, Missouri, etc.
If I’m not mistaken, in France there are two types of oak grown for barrels, one of which is the same species found in the mountains above Tokaj in Hungary. But the barrels made from those woods produce wine with flavor profiles as different as those between American and French. Again, the terroir and barrel making have as much to do with the final result as the wood itself.
![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}