Barrel ageing

Barrel ageing means that the wine is allowed to mature in wooden vessels, most often oak barrels, for a period that can stretch from a few months to several years. It is part of the wine's overall maturation, where it slowly develops after fermentation. During barrel ageing several things happen at once: the wine draws substances out of the wood, it receives very small amounts of oxygen through the pores of the barrel, and its own components react with one another and form new aromas and flavours. The result is typically a wine with more complexity, a more rounded mouthfeel and a colour that stabilises over time.

Barrel ageing matters for what you taste and smell. A new barrel gives off a more pronounced character, while an older barrel, which may have been used many times, leaves a far more subdued imprint and lets the fruit and the wine's own character step into the foreground. Oak from different forests and different degrees of toasting during production also leave their mark, from discreet spicy tones to notes of smoke or honey.

A widespread misunderstanding is that barrel ageing always means strong vanilla and toast. That applies mostly to young barrels. If a producer uses, for example, a large, old Slavonian oak barrel, you often notice the wood very little, and the ageing is more about slow, gentle maturation than about the taste of wood. So if you see a long barrel time on a label, that in itself does not tell you how pronounced the wood will be.