Pinot in barrel

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Maheesh

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Just about to put my 5 month old pinot noir in a new 50L oak vadai barrel...I'll have 8 gallons left in stainless steel, nothing else to add after that...would you....let it sit until next harvest, most likely over oaking it, then blend it back with the 8 gallons ? Put it back in stainless after its properly Oaked and put the barrel in storage......take out 8 gallons and then add the other 8 gallons from the stainless? Thx
 
Whoa......slow down a bit. I don't think you are going to like barrels much with your current plan. You have some good advice in other threads here to put at least 1-2 other red wine batches in barrel for ~8-12 months before you will get much benefit out of starting to barrel your new pinot.

What other reds do you like to drink? You could start with 3 x 6 gal red kits, or 3-4 buckets of Chilean juice/grapes first. Rotate these through the new barrel to figure out how much wine it will hold, how much you need to top up, how often you need to add kmeta, and how fast the oak is imparted into the wine. In about a year you will be ready to add your 2014 pinot, and by then you will have a batch of 2015 pinot waiting to rotate into the barrel this time next year! By fall 2016, your barrel will be about neutral on imparting oak, and then you can start adding oak beans or spirals and just using it for the micro-oxidation benefit.
 
Be careful! Pinot Noir is a very touchy wine.... I have mine in a barrel that is two years old. You will not like all that oak in this light wine! I would never recommend this wine go into a brand new barrel.....
 
I agree with the above, Pinot is rather delicate and does not really take well to any kind of extreme.

A good rule of thumb is to plan to barrel age 1 week for each gallon of capacity. Keep in mind that the ratio of surface area to volume increases as the barrel get smaller. For a 60 gallon (or 225 liter) barrel, I plan on againg for 60 weeks.

For a 50 liter barrel (lets say 13 gallons) I advise that you plan to age for 13 weeks.

Of course, you should taste the wine and let your tastes decide if you need to age it longer or shorter.
 

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