Wine Aging (glass carboy vs. oak barrel)

[mcorey]

Hello,
I've been making wine for about 2 years. I started with juice buckets and now I make directly from grapes. The juice buckets were ok and I haven't bottled my grapes yet.

I've been aging my wine in glass carboys with oak sticks/spirals. I put the sticks/spirals in for a about 6 weeks and age the wine for about 1 year (from crush to bottle).

I'm concerned that I'm not reaching the potential of the wine as I'm not using oak barrels. The idea of using oak barrels sounds cool but I don't think I'm up for the additional work, risk and expense.

It there anything I can being doing w/ my glass carboys that mimics the aging process in the oak barrels (micro-oxidation)? Will my glass-aged wine be good?

 

[Boatboy24]

Your glass aged wine will be good, provided the raw materials were decent and you didn't do anything to mess them up.

Regarding the barrels, I really don't think they are much work at all. The biggest challenge is making sure you have enough wine available to keep them full. What size batches are you making?

 

[ibglowin]

The biggest challenge with a barrel is keeping the SO2 levels up as they will drop like a rock, keeping them full and having enough in the pipeline to rotate things in and out. They will soften your wine with the micro oxidation as well as concentrate the flavors through evaporation. All worth it in the end.

 

[mcorey]

I'm making 6 gallon batches but several at a time. Right now I have about 9 six gallon batches going or about 54 total gallons.

They are good grapes too from good vineyards. I paid $60/lug for them.




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[Boatboy24]

Get yourself a 23 liter Vadai barrel. It is totally worth it. Do you have a way to test your SO2 levels?

 

[mcorey]

Yes. I have a vinmetrica sc-300.
I probably shouldn't age it too long during the barrels first use right?


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[NorCal]

I have two 30g barrels, a flextank and carboys. The addional effort I see with the barrels is topping, loses SO2 faster and being more difficult to clean. What's nice about the Carboy is that you can see everything from the outside, not so with the barrel.
I've also been told that I should use 60g barrels, as the surface area to volume is correct, in order to have the wine reach its full potential. What I haven't done is split a ferment up and taste the difference between the vessels.

 

[Boatboy24]

See this link. It is just a guide, of course. Taste every two weeks and remove the wine from the barrel when you think it has gone just past your desired oak level. The oak will fall back. In fact, if you run that first one through for 4 weeks and keep it in the carboy for a few months, you might find you can run it through a second time for a few more weeks.

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f74/barrel-aging-schedule-33425/

I have one barrel that is neutral now and another that is just about there. The older one I use for wines from grapes (that have gone through MLF), and the other for kits. Kits usually stay in about 3 months and wines from fresh grapes or juice buckets go 5-6.

 

[mcorey]

Thank you all for the replies and advice.


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