Stuff I don’t know: Oak in winemaking and wine drinking

I opened a 2022 Ramey Fort Ross-Seaview at dinner last night. We had a friend of my wife over and after her first sip she commented “Ahh, this is made with Oak in the fermentation”. As the dinner moved along and the wine became less chilled, I said to my wife that I thought the wine was becoming more tastier and she agreed. Her friend commented that this improvement was because the “Oak flavor is being removed as the wine aerates.”
I didn’t sense that the wine was noticeably oaky at my first taste, and I didn’t know that the taste of oak in a wine can be lessened with aeration. I kept my mouth shut in both cases, but questioned myself about how little I know about why and how oak is used in winemaking and if wines made with oak need aeration to make their taste profile more appealing. I am not looking to critique our guests comments, but to learn something that I don’t know.
Thanks.

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As I was saying . . .
So I went and educated myself a bit on the use of oak in winemaking. But I could use some help in a couple of aspects of drinking wine that has an oak “presence”. I am talking about white wines in this case.
-How do oak influences show in a white wine when they are subtle? (I think that I can detect the strong presence of oak when it is there.)
-Do the tastes in the wine that are due to oak lessen as the wine aerates? Do they lessen as the wine ages.
Thanks.

  1. Look for flavors of vanilla, toast, smoke, cedar (if overpronounced), clove. There are others - I don’t have my full list with me. In general, I can detect vanilla at very low concentrations and that is my tell.

  2. I don’t think the oak subdued with aeration. Rather, I suspect that as the wine warmed up and was aerated, the fruit aromatics became more pronounced and the wine was brought into better balance.

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This makes sense to me, Tariq.
Thanks for answering both of my questions :wine_glass:

This is definitely not true. Most aromatic oak compounds have low volatility - they don’t evaporate easily - and are very stable. This is why an empty glass of Bourbon smells so woody, and why warm woody and vanilla notes are some of the ones that linger longest on the skin in perfumery. I like Tariq’s point about the other components coming to the fore as the wine aerates. That is very much the case.

There’s also a difference in the flavors you get from fermenting in oak vs just aging in oak. It is quite hard to explain using comparison words, because the overall aromatic profile of barrel fermentation is a very distinctive one, but you are definitely familiar with it if you’ve had enough Chardonnay.

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