Oak Barrels

super6one

Hi, and thank you for your fermentation advice.  I was just looking for some advice on aging home made wine in an oak barrel.  There seems to be several companies advertising relatively cheap (£60 for 5 Litre) new oak barrels.  Will investing in one of these and aging my wine really make that much of a difference to the taste?  If so, why doesn't HBO offer them for sale?  I read that the additional flavouring that the barrels offer diminishes quite quickly, is that the case?  It seems to me that if they do have some longevity, then it might be a worthwhile investment.  Any advice would be much appreciated.

HBO_Staff

That's a good question, we have looked at stocking oak barrels before but it has come to nothing so far, we find many customers shop on price, and £60 to store just 5 litres like the one you found is quite a lot of money. Not only that, they are quite heavy and we are restricted by what our couriers will ship, a 5 litre would probably be OK but the larger barrels are very heavy. To be honest we can't say how much difference it would make to the wine, it is possible it would add to the flavour, oak chips are available on the market for mixing into the wine to impart flavour, which is probably intended to do the same thing.

Our thinking is that the quality of the wine ingredients kits now available is so high, using some extremely good quality grapes, especially with the top end kits such as Kenridge, etc, that the flavours are already as good as you can get from many expensive shop bought wines, so there is often no need to tinker with them further. However we know people like to add flavours to improve them to their own taste, and why not, so adding oak chips or storing in a barrel may help. With the top end of the wine kits such as the Kenridge Founders series, some varieties come with a 'crush grape pack' which is actual crushed grapes, to give what they call a 'true "on-the-skins" fermentation experience', and combined with more grape juice, up to 18 litres, are as close to making wine from grapes as you will probably get with a kit.

Sorry we can't say for sure on the effect the oak barrel would have, we would certainly love to hear if anyone has tried it and what they found the results to be, and whether it was worth it. Results probably largely depend on the amount of time you intend to barrel the wine for too