The insanely huge American Oak thread.

WINE TALK
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You guys know I’m kind of intrigued by judicious and subtle use of AO in my own winery, but that’s not why I started this thread. No, the reason is whenever we talk about AO, only two examples are ever given as examples: Ridge and Silver Oak. And up until 2015, Jordan. But what other wineries do you know of that uses it predominantly? Must be more than just those two, as 40% of most coopers yearly sales are AO. They can’t all be going to Bourbon-country…

But this is the big AO thread, spill your thoughts, most inner hates or loves here. [cheers.gif]

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Back in the day, early 80’s, Caymus SS was my first experience with BAO. The elder Charlie was also one of my first Napa meme persons!

I liked it!

I don’t know if they still lean that way.

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They still use it?

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Here is my AO story. Years ago (late 1980s) a friend from work invited me to join him at a small Silver Oak tasting (seated and we each had multiple pours in front of us) in the basement of a fancy new wine shop. So I’m sitting there tasting the wines and someone is up talking about the wines and I turn to my friend and say, “I can’t believe someone is wearing sun lotion! It is stinking up the room!” My friend says, sun lotion? I don’t think anyone is wearing sun lotion.” I said, “what? You don’t smell the Coppertone?” My friend says, “Maureen, it’s February!” I said, “you don’t smell the coconut oil?” He started laughing. “That’s the new American oak on the Silver Oak!” And I have never been able to drink that wine since (even when I still drank cab).

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Not domestic, but one that comes to my mind is López de Heredia. Pretty sure they use exclusively American oak, although not a high percentage is new.

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All Rioja worth a damn uses American oak.

And Ridge Monte Bello is the greatest American wine.

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Lopez de Heredia uses big 100-year old American oak barrels. Doubt any of it is new - I think they season the barrels with wines that they sell. By the way, would Heredia taste the same if instead of AO they used very old seasoned french oak?

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I dunno! Haven’t had it in ages.

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Wait, this thread isn’t about really big trees?

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There was a thread a long time ago now about a winery using “200% new oak”…so that’s a 2 for 1

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Penfolds Grange - 100% new AO

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I think Rombauer uses a lot of American oak on their wines.
Ste Michelle once sent me a purchase order for another company’s AO by mistake…. Huge number

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LdH also came to mind for me too, and if they are using barrels that old, I’ll eat my hat - opened a 2011 Viña Cubillo tonight at a table that had the dill/pickle juice signature all over it! (but not excessively, if you like that kind of thing.)

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Don’t Panic.

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Things I’ve learned about american oak (and/or oak in general).

One caveat: I’ve never used american oak in any of my wines so far. But I like to understand interesting/controversial/possibly useful wine topics, and American Oak qualifies on at least one point there!

For a long time, in the early 1900s, 1800s and earlier, oak barrels were the storage/transport vessel of choice. The containerized cargo of that era. In the U.S., and elsewhere, american oak was used, of course. This lead to the great depletion of american oak trees, esp older american oak trees, by the early/mid 1900s.

Apparently, barrels made from 80-100 year old american oak trees were the most desired/prized for wine aging (and other similar uses). But, alas, those trees have all been cut down long ago. Realizing the situation, a program was set up to replant Am oak trees in the mid/early 1900s. Also, fortunately, we moved on to other transport storage vessels.

It’s only now that the AmOak trees that were replanted so long ago are beginning to enter the prized 80+ year old zone. Perhaps there will be a resurgence of Am Oak usage over the years. I suspect we lost a lot of expertise in oak harvesting/drying/toasting/etc from the 1800/1700s era. I’ve heard a number of folks say they believe this, the loss of 80+ yo trees and barrel making expertise from that era, is the root of the complaints we have about AmOak.

Another semi-unrelated comment about oak was from René Dauvissat in 2002. He said oak is very important to Chablis (I’m not saying he used AmOak tho, of course!). I believe this quote…I was fortunate to meet & barrel taste with Vincent Dauvissat a bit later than this, who made similar comments. They feel/felt that the synergy of air and the wood adds character to the wine, and helps to soften the wine…that without oak, Chablis would be too hard and too austere (referring to Chablis in the 1990s and earlier). Given that there has been a seismic shift in the ripeness and structure of grapes and wine, between the 90s/earlier and now, perhaps oak no longer has an appropriate/prominent place in ‘terroir’ based winemaking. My wines, including my Chardonnays, rarely see any new oak elements these days, because it just doesn’t seem to fit imo. I haven’t nailed my foot to the floor on this tho.

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Isn’t Clio 100% new oak?

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I know Alta Colina I’m Paso has at least one Syrah that was aged in new American oak. They may use it a few others as well.

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A lot of South Australian Shiraz uses AO with that vanillan character historically quite dominant. Rioja is also a big user of AO and as I get older I’m finding myself disliking the AO character more and more (or perhaps it is just in the way that it interacts with Tempranillo). I used to buy a bit of Rioja but have pulled back a lot in recent years.

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Not big barrels, barriques (or other barrels of similar size). And not 100-yo, the average barrel age there is around 10 yo. But yes, virtually all is old, less than 10% of the barrels are replaced annually. IIRC, it used to be 5% and the average age close to 20.

Maybe you were thinking of their huge, 130-yo fermentation vats?

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You’re right, I had this memory of a picture I saw of big old barrels and those are the ferment vats! I just checked their website and it explains what you said exactly. Smaller, mostly old, barrels. I don’t think I have gotten much of the typical dill/coconut flavor in any Tondonia I have tasted. In this case, what’s the main difference between old American vs French oak barrels? The amount of areation? The flavor imparted should be minimal in both cases right?