French Oak:Medium vs. Medium Plus Toast

[Matty_Kay]

Hey everyone, I was just curious as to everyone's opinion/preference of medium vs. medium plus toast. I am planning on using French oak spirals on my CA Merlot from juice bucket which I'm preparing to bulk age and am curious as to others results using either toast level. I read the toast descriptions and they all sound good in their own way. Any thoughts, opinions or experience is appreciated.

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[cmason1957]

I like oak and never add anything but medium plus.

 

[ckvchestnut]

Has anyone tried heavier than med plus! Obviously the diff toasts give different things. Does medium only give so much compared to the plus? Or something different?


Carolyn

 

[Pumpkinman]

Carolyn, I find that medium is a nice safe level of oak for most wine, this is a very subjective question, it really depends on your personal tastes, but I find there are wines that can take a bit more oak such as Cabernet Sauvignon, even an Amarone, that can easily take a Medium Plus, as a matter of fact, I've added Med. Plus to my Cabs and absolutely love it, I really feel that is complimented the flavor profile!
After a bit of aging, the oak starts to give up those caramel/vanilla undertones with a nice smoothness to the wine....damn...it's only 9:00 am here and now I want to pop open a bottle..LMAO!

Cmason1957: I like oak and never add anything but medium plus

You da man my friend!!!

 

[ckvchestnut]

Ya... I have only just used medium - don't have any med plus. I am using heavy toast in my blueberry peach port style right now and my Gamay... Oh and my chocolate orange port. Will find out what it does I guess! With all the winemaking and tasting etc it almost doesn't seem out of place to crack a bottle at 9am lol


Carolyn

 

[GreginND]

Morewine has a good white paper on oak (link below).

The toast level has more to do with what kinds of flavor profile is imparted into the wine, not necessarily the amount of oak.

http://morewinemaking.com/public/pdf/oakinfopaper09.pdf

Summing-up, some applicable generalizations of toast levels on oak:

• The lower the toast, the more tannins (“structure”) and lactones (“wood-like” and “coconut”) will be present in each of the oaks.
• The higher the toast, the more spice and smoke notes will be present
• The deeper the toast, the more deep the caramel tones will be (moving into butterscotch at medium plus).
• Vanilla will increase up through a medium-plus toast and then decrease with a heavy toast and char.
• American oak will be more aromatic, but French oak will give more structure (Hungarian will give less than the French but more than the American).
• The greater the toast level, the lower the lactones (“wood” and “coconut”) for all three woods.

Medium plus is the most complex of all of the toast levels, and the most popular. Depending on the wine being made, this may or may not be a good thing!

 

[ckvchestnut]

Thanks for that Greg! I've read and saved the morewine paper. For Hungarian they said vanilla for all toast levels didn't they? I'm going to try medium plus soon on my next "victim"!


Carolyn

 

[Matty_Kay]

Great info, gonna roll with medium plus mainly because that's what I ended up grabbing at my local store. Gonna take it easy and check every couple of weeks. Thanks everyone.

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[ckvchestnut]

I racked my Gamay tonight and did a taste test of the wine with my med oak in it vs the unoaked top up wine and the difference is like night and day! The oaked one is sooo good!!


Carolyn

 

[Matty_Kay]

Carolyn- Is your gamay from a juice bucket? Did you put through mlf? Just curious because a buddy of mine did a gamay last year and his turned out well without mlf.

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[ckvchestnut]

Yes it's from a juice bucket and no mlf... This tastes good already and it's just aging in the carboy on the oak cubes. I'm very excited about it. It's nice! You liked your firend's Gamay?


Carolyn

 

[Matty_Kay]

I did enjoy it, seemed like a great all around wine. Thinking about doing a gamay in the fall.

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[ckvchestnut]

It will be worth it obviously these are light to medium bodies wines that can be enjoyed a bit earlier and this was my strategy to bottle up a bunch of these and maybe some Zinfandel before moving on to merlot, Shiraz and the likes. I may have to do another of these, so nicely balanced on its own and no need for tweaking etc.


Carolyn