Oak Extract

[Luc]

So last friday I bottled a 1 gallon plum wine carboy., it was the plum wine we harvested last summer. You can find pictures at my web-log.

Now plum wine really demands oaking.
So I added oak chips.

Now sometimes you do not know if a wine benefits from oaking.
So what you can do is take some of the wine (like a gallon) and add oak chips to that trial bench. Then wait a few months, taste and then add oak chips if needed to the rest of the wine.

But there is an easier method.
You can make your own oak extracts.

Buy a bottle of nutral alcohol (wodka is suitable).
Now take an empty bottle and fill it with oak chips.
Now add the wodka to the bottle with oak chips, and let it sit for a couple of months.

After these months the taste and tannins of the oak chips will have dissolved in the wodka which at that time is a brown fluid.
Now filter the oak chips from the extract.

Next take some of the wine that has to be bench-marked.
Add some oak extract drops and you will immediately know if the wine will benefit from oaking.

You now have the choice to add oak chips to the wine, or add the extract itself to the wine.

For a photo session look at my web-log for the november 25 entry.
http://wijnmaker.web-log.nl

Luc